Looking into the current session, e.l.f. Beauty Inc. ELF is trading at $27.54, after a 0.33% decrease. Over the past month, the stock decreased by 17.07%, but over the past year, it actually went up by 22.24%. With questionable short-term performance like this, and great long-term performance, long-term shareholders might want to start looking into the company's price-to-earnings ratio.

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Assuming that all other factors are held constant, this could present itself as an opportunity for shareholders trying to capitalize on the higher share price. The stock is currently under from its 52 week high by 18.11%.

The P/E ratio is used by long-term shareholders to assess the company's market performance against aggregate market data, historical earnings, and the industry at large. A lower P/E can either represent a company's poor future earnings potential or a buying opportunity relative to other stocks. It shows that shareholders are less than willing to pay a high share price, because they do not expect the company to exhibit growth, in terms of future earnings.

Most often, an industry will prevail in a particular phase of a business cycle, than other industries.

Compared to the aggregate P/E ratio of 26.3 in the Personal Products industry, e.l.f. Beauty Inc. has a higher P/E ratio of 81.26. Shareholders might be inclined to think that e.l.f. Beauty Inc. might perform better than its industry group. It's also possible that the stock is overvalued.

Price to earnings ratio is not always a great indicator of the company's performance. Depending on the earnings makeup of a company, investors can become unable to attain key insights from trailing earnings.