Sales Growth as a metric

[hendi_alex]

Fuzzy math can affect most any metric. Yesterday on Bloomberg they were talking about the quality of earnings growth for S&P500 companies. They said that for well over 200 of the 500 companies in the index, that share repurchases created more than 50% of the reported earnings per share growth. When looking at sales growth, it shows that those companies were stagnant or shrinking. From this I would assume that for a DG candidate, one would want to view sales growth as equally important to dividend growth and earnings growth. For many cash rich companies, dividend growth and earnings growth could be fudged for prolonged periods, even while the company fails to execute and grow the business. In such cases, projected growth and expected doubling times could easily not materialize.

[rnsmth]

That is one reason I like to go to key ratios firm Morningstar's summary quote page. A variety of financial starts are available year by year for the past decade. I highly recommend it.