IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/121568.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evaluating Stock Selection in the SaaS Industry: The Effectiveness of the Rule of 40

Author

Listed:
  • Lee, King Fuei

Abstract

The Rule of 40 is a popular financial guideline used by software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry participants to assess the operational health of the companies. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the Rule of 40 as a stock selection criterion. Our study analyses a sample of 1771 SaaS companies worldwide spanning the period 2003-2022. The findings demonstrate that the Rule of 40 adds value and delivers a moderately high Sharpe ratio as a stock selection tool. A modified rule, the SaaS Investing Rule of 65, is proposed and found to outperform the Rule of 40 in identifying relative winners and losers within the SaaS space. The effectiveness of the rules raises practical implications for investors and analysts. Additionally, we explore the effectiveness of alternative versions of the Rule of 40 using different measures of profitability, as well investigate whether the returns are driven by traditional style factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, King Fuei, 2024. "Evaluating Stock Selection in the SaaS Industry: The Effectiveness of the Rule of 40," MPRA Paper 121568, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:121568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/121568/1/MPRA_paper_121568.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James L. Davis & Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2000. "Characteristics, Covariances, and Average Returns: 1929 to 1997," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 389-406, February.
    2. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    3. Martin L. Leibowitz, 2002. "The Levered P/E Ratio," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(6), pages 68-77, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Silva, A. Christian & Prange, Richard E., 2007. "Virtual volatility," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 376(C), pages 507-516.
    2. Praveen Kumar Das & S P Uma Rao, 2011. "Value Premiums And The January Effect: International Evidence," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 5(4), pages 1-15.
    3. Arati Kale & Devendra Kale & Sriram Villupuram, 2024. "Decomposition of risk for small size and low book-to-market stocks," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(1), pages 96-112, February.
    4. Shaun Bond & Chen Xue, 2017. "The Cross Section of Expected Real Estate Returns: Insights from Investment-Based Asset Pricing," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 403-428, April.
    5. Stefan Nagel, 2013. "Empirical Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 167-199, November.
    6. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    7. Oyetayo Oluwatosin J & Adeyeye Patrick Olufemi, 2017. "A Robust Application of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory: Evidence from Nigeria," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 9(1), pages 141-151.
    8. Gerard Hoberg & S. Katie Moon, 2019. "The Offshoring Return Premium," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2876-2899, June.
    9. Wallmeier, Martin & Tauscher, Kathrin, 2012. "A Note on the Impact of Portfolio Overlapping in Tests of the Fama and French Three-Factor Model," FSES Working Papers 433, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    10. João F. Gomes & Leonid Kogan & Motohiro Yogo, 2009. "Durability of Output and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(5), pages 941-986.
    11. Cong, Lin William & George, Nathan Darden & Wang, Guojun, 2023. "RIM-based value premium and factor pricing using value-price divergence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    12. Nijman, Theo & Swinkels, Laurens & Verbeek, Marno, 2004. "Do countries or industries explain momentum in Europe?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 461-481, September.
    13. Juhani T. Linnainmaa & Michael R. Roberts, 2016. "The History of the Cross Section of Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 22894, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Piet Sercu & Martina Vandebroek & Tom Vinaimont, 2008. "Thin-Trading Effects in Beta: Bias "v." Estimation Error," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(9-10), pages 1196-1219.
    15. Pheng Bian Ong & Mohamed Hisham Hanifa & Mansor Mohd Isa, 2018. "Do Firm Size and Value Affect Shareholder Returns in Malaysia?," Capital Markets Review, Malaysian Finance Association, vol. 26(2), pages 53-69.
    16. Fong, Wai Mun, 2012. "Do expected business conditions explain the value premium?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 181-206.
    17. Campbell, John Y. & Giglio, Stefano & Polk, Christopher & Turley, Robert, 2018. "An intertemporal CAPM with stochastic volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 207-233.
    18. Carolin Pflueger & Emil Siriwardane & Adi Sunderam, 2019. "Financial Market Risk Perceptions and the Macroeconomy," NBER Working Papers 26290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Kelly, Bryan & Pruitt, Seth, 2015. "The three-pass regression filter: A new approach to forecasting using many predictors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(2), pages 294-316.
    20. John Y. Campbell & Christopher Polk & Tuomo Vuolteenaho, 2010. "Growth or Glamour? Fundamentals and Systematic Risk in Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 305-344, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rule of 40; SaaS; software-as-a-service; stock selection; SaaS Investing Rule of 65;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:121568. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.