When you see that almost half of the companies in the Professional Services industry in the United States have price-to-sales ratios (or "P/S") below 1.4x, Dayforce Inc. (NYSE:DAY) looks to be giving off strong sell signals with its 6.1x P/S ratio. However, the P/S might be quite high for a reason and it requires further investigation to determine if it's justified.

What Does Dayforce's P/S Mean For Shareholders?

Dayforce certainly has been doing a good job lately as it's been growing revenue more than most other companies. It seems that many are expecting the strong revenue performance to persist, which has raised the P/S. You'd really hope so, otherwise you're paying a pretty hefty price for no particular reason.

How Is Dayforce's Revenue Growth Trending?

The only time you'd be truly comfortable seeing a P/S as steep as Dayforce's is when the company's growth is on track to outshine the industry decidedly.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered an exceptional 19% gain to the company's top line. The strong recent performance means it was also able to grow revenue by 84% in total over the last three years. Accordingly, shareholders would have definitely welcomed those medium-term rates of revenue growth.

Shifting to the future, estimates from the analysts covering the company suggest revenue should grow by 15% each year over the next three years. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry is forecast to only expand by 7.2% each year, which is noticeably less attractive.

With this in mind, it's not hard to understand why Dayforce's 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 Final Word

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.

As we suspected, our examination of Dayforce's analyst forecasts revealed that its superior revenue outlook is contributing to its high P/S. It appears that shareholders are confident in the company's future revenues, which is propping up the P/S. Unless these conditions change, they will continue to provide strong support to the share price.

Many other vital risk factors can be found on the company's balance sheet. Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis for Dayforce with six simple checks on some of these key factors.

If companies with solid past earnings growth is up your alley, you may wish to see this free collection of other companies with strong earnings growth and low P/E ratios.

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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.