When close to half the companies in the United States have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") above 18x, you may consider Scorpio Tankers Inc. (NYSE:STNG) as a highly attractive investment with its 2.7x P/E ratio. Although, it's not wise to just take the P/E at face value as there may be an explanation why it's so limited.

With earnings growth that's superior to most other companies of late, Scorpio Tankers has been doing relatively well. One possibility is that the P/E is low because investors think this strong earnings performance might be less impressive moving forward. 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 Scorpio Tankers' future stacks up against the industry? In that case, our free report is a great place to start.

How Is Scorpio Tankers' Growth Trending?

Scorpio Tankers' P/E ratio would be typical for a company that's expected to deliver very poor growth or even falling earnings, and importantly, perform much worse than the market.

If we review the last year of earnings growth, the company posted a terrific increase of 32%. Although, its longer-term performance hasn't been as strong with three-year EPS growth being relatively non-existent overall. So it appears to us that the company has had a mixed result in terms of growing earnings over that time.

Looking ahead now, EPS is anticipated to slump, contracting by 12% per annum during the coming three years according to the nine analysts following the company. That's not great when the rest of the market is expected to grow by 11% per year.

In light of this, it's understandable that Scorpio Tankers' P/E would sit below the majority of other companies. However, shrinking earnings are unlikely to lead to a stable P/E over the longer term. Even just maintaining these prices could be difficult to achieve as the weak outlook is weighing down the shares.

What We Can Learn From Scorpio Tankers' P/E?

Generally, our preference is to limit the use of the price-to-earnings ratio to establishing what the market thinks about the overall health of a company.

We've established that Scorpio Tankers maintains its low P/E on the weakness of its forecast for sliding earnings, as expected. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in earnings isn't great enough to justify a higher P/E ratio. Unless these conditions improve, they will continue to form a barrier for the share price around these levels.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with a strong growth track record, trading on a low P/E.

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.