Why Do Scottrade and Yahoo Finance Have Such Different P/E Ratios for the Same Stock?

Example:

Verisgn

Scottrade lists P/E @ 19.9

Yahoo lists P/E @ 7.85


There are MANY examples of this.

 

are they both previous 12 months or is one forward looking??

 

Scottrade is trailing.

Yahoo doesn't specify (it's on the screener), but I assume it's trailing.

 

There are alot of reasons they could differ. One uses TTM earnings, one uses trialing year earnings, one uses projected yearly earnings estimates. the projections can differ also as they may have different pools of analysts the use to guage the estimate.

 

This is a common problem. I mentioned it in another thread.