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.
The historical rank and industry rank for Automatic Data Processing's Graham Number or its related term are showing as below:
ADP'
s Price-to-Graham-Number Range Over the Past 10 Years
Min: 4.27 Med: 6.98 Max: 32.17
Current: 13.64
During the past 13 years, the highest Price to Graham Number ratio of Automatic Data Processing was 32.17. The lowest was 4.27. And the median was 6.98.
ADP's Price-to-Graham-Number is ranked worse than 95% of 1481
companies
in the Software industry
Industry Median: 2.42
vs ADP: 13.64
Graham Number is a combination of asset valuation and earnings power valuation. It is a very conservative way of valuing a stock.
Automatic Data Processing Graham Number Historical Data
* 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 Automatic Data Processing's Graham Number
For the Software - Application subindustry, Automatic Data Processing'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.
Automatic Data Processing's Price-to-Graham-Number Distribution in the Software Industry
For the Software industry and Technology sector, Automatic Data Processing's Price-to-Graham-Number distribution charts can be found below:
* The bar in red indicates where Automatic Data Processing's Price-to-Graham-Number falls into.
* 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.
Automatic Data Processing (NAS:ADP) 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.
Automatic Data Processing's Price to Graham number Ratio for today is calculated as
Price to Graham number
=
Share Price (Today)
/
Graham number (Q: Mar. 2025 )
=
310.43
/
22.75
=
13.65
* 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.
Automatic Data Processing Graham Number Related Terms
Thank you for viewing the detailed overview of Automatic Data Processing's Graham Number provided by GuruFocus.com. Please click on the following links to see related term pages.
Automatic Data Processing is a global technology company providing cloud-based human capital management solutions enabling clients to better implement payroll, talent, time, tax, and benefits administration. Additionally, ADP provides human resource outsourcing solutions that allow customers to offload some of their traditional HR tasks. The company operates through two segments: employer services and the professional employer organization services. Employer services consists of the company's HCM products as well as a la carte HRO solutions. PEO services contains ADP's comprehensive HRO solution where it acts as a co-employer with its customer. As of fiscal 2024, ADP serves over 1.1 million clients and pays over 42 million workers across 140 countries.
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