The Nova Eye Medical Limited (ASX:EYE) share price has fared very poorly over the last month, falling by a substantial 26%. Instead of being rewarded, shareholders who have already held through the last twelve months are now sitting on a 15% share price drop.

Following the heavy fall in price, Nova Eye Medical's price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio of 1.7x might make it look like a buy right now compared to the Medical Equipment industry in Australia, where around half of the companies have P/S ratios above 3.3x and even P/S above 16x are quite common. However, the P/S might be low for a reason and it requires further investigation to determine if it's justified.

See our latest analysis for Nova Eye Medical

What Does Nova Eye Medical's P/S Mean For Shareholders?

With revenue growth that's superior to most other companies of late, Nova Eye Medical has been doing relatively well. It might be that many expect the strong revenue performance to degrade substantially, which has repressed the share price, and thus the P/S ratio. If you like the company, you'd be hoping this isn't the case so that you could potentially pick up some stock while it's out of favour.

Keen to find out how analysts think Nova Eye Medical's future stacks up against the industry? In that case, our free report is a great place to start.

How Is Nova Eye Medical's Revenue Growth Trending?

There's an inherent assumption that a company should underperform the industry for P/S ratios like Nova Eye Medical's to be considered reasonable.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered an exceptional 37% gain to the company's top line. The latest three year period has also seen an excellent 74% overall rise in revenue, aided by its short-term performance. Accordingly, shareholders would have definitely welcomed those medium-term rates of revenue growth.

Shifting to the future, estimates from the dual analysts covering the company suggest revenue should grow by 31% per year over the next three years. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry is forecast to only expand by 11% per annum, which is noticeably less attractive.

With this information, we find it odd that Nova Eye Medical is trading at a P/S lower than the industry. Apparently some shareholders are doubtful of the forecasts and have been accepting significantly lower selling prices.

The Bottom Line On Nova Eye Medical's P/S

Nova Eye Medical's recently weak share price has pulled its P/S back below other Medical Equipment companies. It's argued the price-to-sales ratio is an inferior measure of value within certain industries, but it can be a powerful business sentiment indicator.

A look at Nova Eye Medical's revenues reveals that, despite glowing future growth forecasts, its P/S is much lower than we'd expect. The reason for this depressed P/S could potentially be found in the risks the market is pricing in. It appears the market could be anticipating revenue instability, because these conditions should normally provide a boost to the share price.

Before you take the next step, you should know about the 3 warning signs for Nova Eye Medical that we have uncovered.

Of course, profitable companies with a history of great earnings growth are generally safer bets. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have reasonable P/E ratios and have grown earnings strongly.

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