Graham Number is a figure that measures a stock's fundamental value by taking into account the company's earnings per share and book value per share. The Graham number is the upper bound of the price range that a defensive investor should pay for the stock. According to the theory, any stock price below the Graham number is considered undervalued, and thus worth investing in.
* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD. * For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.
Competitive Comparison of HCC Insurance Holdings's Graham Number
For the Insurance - Property & Casualty subindustry, HCC Insurance Holdings's Price-to-Graham-Number, along with its competitors' market caps and Price-to-Graham-Number data, can be viewed below:
* Competitive companies are chosen from companies within the same industry, with headquarter located in same country, with closest market capitalization; x-axis shows the market cap, and y-axis shows the term value; the bigger the dot, the larger the market cap. Note that "N/A" values will not show up in the chart.
HCC Insurance Holdings's Price-to-Graham-Number Distribution in the Insurance Industry
For the Insurance industry and Financial Services sector, HCC Insurance Holdings's Price-to-Graham-Number distribution charts can be found below:
* The bar in red indicates where HCC Insurance Holdings's Price-to-Graham-Number falls into.
HCC Insurance Holdings Graham Number Calculation
Graham Number is a concept based on Ben Graham's conservative valuation of companies.
HCC Insurance Holdings's Graham Number for the fiscal year that ended in Dec. 2014 is calculated as
* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD. * For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.
HCC Insurance Holdings (FRA:HCZ) Graham Number Explanation
Ben Graham actually did not publish a formula like this. But he wrote in The Intelligent Investor (1948 version) regarding to the criteria for purchases:
Current price should not be more than 15 times average earnings of the past three years.
Current price should not be more than 1.5 times the book value last reported. However, a multiplier of earnings below 15 could justify a correspondingly higher multiplier of assets. As a rule of thumb we suggest that the product of the multiplier times the ratio of price to book value should not exceed 22.5. (This figure corresponds to 15 times earnings and 1.5 times book value. It would admit an issue selling at only 9 times earnings and 2.5 times asset value, etc.)
Unlike valuation methods such as DCF or Discounted Earnings, the Graham number does not take growth into the valuation. Unlike the valuation methods based on book value alone, it takes into account the earnings power. Therefore, the Graham Number is a combination of asset valuation and earnings power valuation.
In general, the Graham number is a very conservative way of valuing a stock. It cannot be applied to companies with negative book values.
HCC Insurance Holdings's Price to Graham number Ratio for today is calculated as
Price to Graham number
=
Share Price (Today)
/
Graham number (Q: Jun. 2015 )
=
70.39
/
49.20
=
1.43
* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD. * For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.
Be Aware
Please keep these in mind:
1. Graham Number does not take growth into account. Therefore it underestimates the values of the companies that have good earnings growth. We feel that if the earnings per share grows more than 10% a year, Graham Number underestimates the value.
2. Graham Number punishes the companies that have temporarily low earnings. Therefore, an average of earnings makes more sense in the calculation of Graham Number.
3. Graham Numbers underestimates companies that are light with book.
HCC Insurance Holdings Graham Number Related Terms
Thank you for viewing the detailed overview of HCC Insurance Holdings's Graham Number provided by GuruFocus.com. Please click on the following links to see related term pages.
HCC Insurance Holdings (FRA:HCZ) Business Description
HCC Insurance Holdings Inc was incorporated in the state of Delaware in 1991. The Company provides specialized property and casualty, surety, and group life, accident and health insurance coverages and related agency and reinsurance brokerage services to commercial customers and individuals. It concentrates its activities in selected, narrowly defined, specialty lines of business. The Company has five underwriting segments: U.S. Property & Casualty, Professional Liability, Accident & Health, U.S. Surety & Credit and International. U.S. Property & Casualty segment includes specialty lines of insurance such as aviation, small account errors and omissions liability (E&O), public risk, contingency, disability, title and mortgage reinsurance, residual value, employment practices liability (EPLI), technical property, primary and excess casualty, and brown water marine written in the U.S. The majority of the business is primary coverage, and claims are reported and settled on a short to medium-term basis. Professional Liability segment primarily consists of its directors' and officers' (D&O) liability business. In addition, it write related professional liability and crime business coverages, including large account E&O liability, fiduciary liability, fidelity and bankers blanket bonds, and EPLI for some D&O policyholders. Accident & Health segment includes medical stop-loss, short-term domestic and international medical products, written in the United States. The majority of the business covers groups of employees, and claims are reported and settled quickly. U.S. Surety & Credit segment conducts business through separate specialty surety underwriting operations and credit underwriting operations. International segment includes energy, property treaty, liability, surety, credit, property (direct and facultative), ocean marine, accident and health and other smaller product lines written from operations in the United Kingdom, Spain and Ireland. The Company operates mainly in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and Ireland. Some of its operations have a broader international scope. The Company markets its products both directly to customers and through a network of independent and affiliated brokers, producers, agents and third party administrators. Its insurance companies are risk-bearing and focus their underwriting activities on providing insurance and/or reinsurance in the following lines of business: Diversified financial products; Group life, accident and health; Aviation; London market account and other specialty lines. The Company's underwriting agencies underwrite on behalf of its insurance companies and in certain situations for other unaffiliated insurance companies. The agencies specialize in the following types of business: contingency; directors' and officers' liability; individual disability; kidnap and ransom; employment practices liability; errors and omissions liability; public entity; various financial products
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