The Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE: RR.) share price reached a 52-week high of 435p on 2 April, up 45% year to date.
And that meant it had more than quadrupled in just two years.
But since that peak, Rolls shares have fallen 9%, to 396p at the time of writing on 19 April. Is this the start of a price correction?
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Wobble
There’s probably some profit-taking here. It often happens with growth or recovery shares. Investors will look at their gains, and just take a bit off the top.
Someone who invested £1,000 in Rolls-Royce shares at the bottom could take that much back out now… and still have around £3,000 left in. It’s like free shares.
Now, I’m not going to start shouting that the sky is falling. Even if Rolls shares should dip a bit, I still think we could be looking at a long-term buy.
But I say it pays to sit back and take a look at where the valuation might go at various price levels.
Valuation
So, here’s a table showing forecast valuations for Rolls-Royce, at different prices. I look at the peak price of 435p, the recent 396p, and then at 5%, 10%, and 20% falls from today.
And so I don’t look like a total sourpuss, I check what a 20% price rise might do. (We don’t need to see a 10% rise, as that would just take us back to 435p.)
So here’s what forecast price-to-earnings (P/E) and dividend yields (DY) could look like:
| Share price | P/E 2024 | P/E 2025 | P/E 2026 | DY 2024 | DY 2025 | DY 2026 |
| 435p (peak) | 29.2 | 24.9 | 21.8 | 0.63% | 0.99% | 1.51% |
| 396p (recent) | 26.6 | 22.7 | 19.9 | 0.69% | 1.09% | 1.66% |
| 376p (-5%) | 25.2 | 21.5 | 18.9 | 0.72% | 1.15% | 1.75% |
| 356p (-10%) | 23.9 | 20.4 | 17.9 | 0.76% | 1.21% | 1.85% |
| 317p (-20%) | 21.3 | 18.2 | 15.9 | 0.86% | 1.36% | 2.08% |
| 475p (+20%) | 31.9 | 27.2 | 23.8 | 0.57% | 0.91% | 1.39% |
20% fall?
That’s a wide range of valuations. And even a 20% fall in the share price from current levels would still leave Rolls-Royce on a P/E of 21.3 for 2024.
That’s about 40% above the long-term FTSE 100 average, so the shares might still look expensive. But for a stock with long-term earnings growth potential, it could be super cheap.
And upbeat forecasts could drop the P/E to 15.9 by 2026. For a top-quality growth stock like Rolls-Royce Holdings, I think that could be a steal.
20% rise?
At the other end, a 20% share price rise from today could give us a 31.9 P/E for this year, dropping to 23.8 by 2026.
And I think a good case could be made that even that’s good value for a stock with the outlook that Rolls has.
All the time, whatever happens to the share price, it looks like the dividend is just getting started. And those yields would be very strongly covered by forecast earnings.
A fall?
Whatever happens in the next 12 months, I don’t think the share price warrants a big fall. But if we get one, it could be a nice buying opportunity.
