Those holding Affirm Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFRM) shares would be relieved that the share price has rebounded 46% in the last thirty days, but it needs to keep going to repair the recent damage it has caused to investor portfolios. The last 30 days bring the annual gain to a very sharp 50%.

Since its price has surged higher, given around half the companies in the United States' Diversified Financial industry have price-to-sales ratios (or "P/S") below 2.4x, you may consider Affirm Holdings as a stock to avoid entirely with its 6x P/S ratio. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the highly elevated P/S.

How Affirm Holdings Has Been Performing

With revenue growth that's superior to most other companies of late, Affirm Holdings has been doing relatively well. The P/S is probably high because investors think this strong revenue performance will continue. If not, then existing shareholders might be a little nervous about the viability of the share price.

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

Is There Enough Revenue Growth Forecasted For Affirm Holdings?

There's an inherent assumption that a company should far outperform the industry for P/S ratios like Affirm Holdings' to be considered reasonable.

Taking a look back first, we see that the company grew revenue by an impressive 46% last year. Pleasingly, revenue has also lifted 149% in aggregate from three years ago, thanks to the last 12 months of growth. Therefore, it's fair to say the revenue growth recently has been superb for the company.

Turning to the outlook, the next three years should generate growth of 26% each year as estimated by the analysts watching the company. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry is forecast to only expand by 6.1% per annum, which is noticeably less attractive.

With this in mind, it's not hard to understand why Affirm Holdings' P/S is high relative to its industry peers. Apparently shareholders aren't keen to offload something that is potentially eyeing a more prosperous future.

The Bottom Line On Affirm Holdings' P/S

Affirm Holdings' P/S has grown nicely over the last month thanks to a handy boost in the share price. Generally, our preference is to limit the use of the price-to-sales ratio to establishing what the market thinks about the overall health of a company.

We've established that Affirm Holdings maintains its high P/S on the strength of its forecasted revenue growth being higher than the the rest of the Diversified Financial industry, as expected. Right now shareholders are comfortable with the P/S as they are quite confident future revenues aren't under threat. It's hard to see the share price falling strongly in the near future under these circumstances.

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.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.