LONDON -- It's always worth keeping an eye on the earnings forecasts for your favorite companies, especially if you use forward P/E ratios to gauge when to buy and sell your shares.
You never know, if City brokers have been revising their projections of late, your investments may not be as cheap -- or expensive -- as you think!
Today I'm looking at the earnings per share forecasts for BT Group
The consensus for 2013 is for earnings per share of 25 pence, which puts the 226 pence shares on a modest forward P/E of 9.
However, the estimates suggest earnings may remain flat for the next four years before dropping slightly to 23 pence for 2017, at least according to City analysts.
The data from S&P Capital IQ also indicates BT Group's revenue may stall around the 18 billion pound mark and EBITDA stagnate at about 6 billion pounds during the next few years.
All told, the forecasts aren't great, with earnings essentially predicted to go nowhere between 2013 and 2017. But then again, that P/E of 9 looks like the market is already expecting earnings won't advance anytime soon.
Whether these projections make BT Group a buy, a hold, or a sell is of course up to you. To put the company's multiple into perspective, the FTSE 100 at 5,800 trades on a P/E of 11.4.
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