EVALUATING STOCK SELECTION IN THE SAAS INDUSTRY: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE RULE OF 40
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 1756 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.
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2024 King Fuei Lee
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty. By publishing in Applied Finance Letters, the author(s) retain copyright but agree to the dissemination of their work through Applied Finance Letters.
By publishing in Applied Finance Letters, the authors grant the Journal a Creative Commons nonexclusive worldwide license (CC-BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License) for electronic dissemination of the article via the Internet, and, a nonexclusive right to license others to reproduce, republish, transmit, and distribute the content of the journal. The authors grant the Journal the right to transfer content (without changing it), to any medium or format necessary for the purpose of preservation.
Authors agree that the Journal will not be liable for any damages, costs, or losses whatsoever arising in any circumstances from its services, including damages arising from the breakdown of technology and difficulties with access.