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Price-to-Book Ratio: Essential for Banks, Nearly Useless for Software

Valuation • Beginner Investing • 7 min

Book value is simply what's left on a company's own balance sheet after subtracting every liability from every asset — the accounting version of shareholders' equity. Price-to-book (P/B) compares a company's market price to that number: market capitalization divided by book value, or share price divided by book value per share. For some industries, that comparison is genuinely central to how professionals value the…

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