Industrials sector valuation
The U.S. industrials sector is at the 94th percentile of its own trailing P/E history, the 91st percentile on CAPE, the 95th percentile on EV/EBITDA and the 99th percentile on price to book.
There is no contradiction to resolve here and no measure that dissents. This page is about what would have to keep happening for those readings to be justified.
United States The four headline readings below are for the U.S. industrials sector. The same six measures for the global and global ex-U.S. industrials sectors are in the table that follows.
| Measure | United States | Global | Global ex-U.S. | U.S. premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trailing P/E | 30.29 | 25.97 | 22.56 | +34% |
| Forward P/E | 23.72 | 20.99 | 18.71 | +27% |
| CAPE | 35.49 | 32.86 | 30.47 | +16% |
| EV/EBITDA | 18.73 | 15.88 | 13.68 | +37% |
| Price to book | 7.53 | — | — | — |
| Dividend yield | 1.22% | — | — | — |
Global covers developed markets, emerging markets and the United States. Global ex-U.S. is the same universe with the United States removed, and still includes both developed and emerging markets. Dividend yield and price to book are published for the U.S. sectors only. Free to reuse with attribution.
Trailing P/E and CAPE, U.S., from 1979. Current earnings are 1.17 times their own inflation-adjusted decade average, so the gap between the two lines is narrow and the level of both is doing the work.
The same four measures, side by side in each market published. The American premium is close to the middle of the eleven sectors and similar on earnings and on EV/EBITDA.
| Year | Trailing P/E | CAPE |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 28.63 | 32.62 |
| 2024 | 24.44 | 29.03 |
| 2023 | 20.42 | 26.62 |
| 2022 | 22.42 | 24.73 |
| 2021 | 33.89 | 29.07 |
| 2020 | 42.28 | 25.69 |
| 2019 | 19.06 | 24.60 |
| 2018 | 14.88 | 20.84 |
| 2017 | 21.78 | 25.98 |
| 2016 | 19.69 | 22.79 |
The full monthly history from 1979, the dividend yield and price-to-book series, and the global and global ex-U.S. figures are available to subscribers.
United States, Aug 2026
U.S. sector against its own history
Expensive on everything at once
Most sectors give a reader something to argue with. One measure looks stretched and another looks reasonable, and the page becomes a question about which denominator to trust.
Not this one. The trailing P/E is 30.29 against a median of 18.31. CAPE is 35.49 against a median of 23.37. Price to book is 7.53, and the dividend yield of 1.22% sits at the 1st percentile of its record since 2005 — a low yield being another way of saying a high price.
Four measures with four different denominators — one year of earnings, ten years of earnings, book value, and dividends paid — and all four are near the top of their own histories. That agreement is rare and it removes the usual escape route. Whatever is happening here is not an artefact of one unusual denominator.
The re-rating rests on a recent stretch
Aggregate earnings grew 22.0% a year over the five years to August 2026. Over ten years the rate is 5.3%, and over twenty it is 5.3%.
The five-year rate is the outlier, and it is the one that has coincided with the re-rating. A sector earning at a long-run rate near the twenty-year figure does not usually support multiples at these percentiles; a sector that has found a genuinely faster gear does. Which of those is happening is not something a valuation database can settle, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
What it can do is say what the arithmetic requires.
What the multiple asks for
With the share price unchanged, returning the trailing P/E from 30.29 to its own median of 18.31 within five years requires aggregate earnings to grow 10.6% a year.
That is arithmetic, not a forecast, and it is the cleanest way to read a multiple. It converts "is this expensive" into a question with a checkable answer: is 10.6% a year plausible for this sector over five years? The twenty-year record says 5.3%. The ten-year record says 5.3%. The five-year record says 22.0%.
A reader who thinks the recent rate is the real one will find the requirement modest. A reader who thinks it is a cyclical stretch will not. Both are looking at the same three numbers, which is the most this page can usefully offer.
The multiple as a signal
Sorting every month since 1979 by the sector's own trailing P/E: in the cheapest fifth of months, aggregate earnings fell over the following twelve months 64% of the time, with a median change of -4.0%. In the dearest fifth, they fell 31% of the time, median +8.1%.
Industrials sit between the two extremes on this test — not as cycle-driven as materials, where a low multiple has reliably marked a peak in earnings, and not as indifferent as consumer staples, where it has meant nothing at all. Some of the multiple here is the cycle, and some of it is the price.
The international comparison
U.S. industrials trade +34% above the rest of the world on trailing earnings, +16% on CAPE and +37% on EV/EBITDA.
The similarity of the earnings premium and the EV/EBITDA premium rules out capital structure as the explanation: the two measures treat debt in opposite ways and arrive at nearly the same answer. The much narrower CAPE premium says the rest of the world has re-rated against its own decade of earnings almost as far as the United States has, even though it remains cheaper on current ones.
Choosing a measure
No single ratio answers every question about a sector. Each of these pages covers the same eleven sectors — what changes is the question the measure is good at, and how far the coverage reaches.
| Measure | The question it answers | Why that one |
|---|---|---|
| EV/EBITDA | How does one sector compare across markets? | Sits above tax and debt, so it survives crossing borders. The only measure here that makes an international sector comparison sound. |
| P/E and earnings | How fast are a sector’s earnings growing? | Trailing and forward multiples with the earnings behind them, so the multiple and its denominator can be read together. |
| CAPE | Is a sector expensive against its own history? | Averages a decade of real earnings, which smooths the cycle out of the denominator. |
| Price to book | What is the market paying for the assets? | Works where earnings-based measures break down — asset-heavy sectors, and banks in particular. U.S. sectors only. |
| Dividend yield | Which sectors pay, and how much? | Income rather than valuation, but it moves inversely with price and is read alongside the multiples. U.S. sectors only. |
Communication Services · Consumer Discretionary · Consumer Staples · Energy · Financials · Health Care · Technology · Materials · Real Estate · Utilities
All eleven side by side: sector valuations. To compare them on one measure: P/E and earnings · CAPE ratios · EV/EBITDA · Dividend yields · Price to book.
Where this data is used
Some examples. Siblis valuation data appears in peer-reviewed journals, central bank publications and the financial press.
The whole industrials history, every trading day
This page publishes ten year-ends and the current reading. The database carries every month back to 1979, for all eleven sectors and every market.
How this is calculated
Every ratio is calculated on the aggregate: the total market capitalisation of the sector's constituents divided by their aggregate earnings, book value or EBITDA, rather than as an average of the constituents' own ratios.
- Trailing P/E — Aggregate normalised net income over the previous twelve months. Major purely accounting gains and losses are removed.
- Forward P/E — Consensus estimates for the next twelve months, aggregated the same way.
- CAPE — Price divided by the average of ten years of inflation-adjusted aggregate earnings.
- Earnings growth — Calculated on aggregate sector earnings, not a per-share figure, so it is unaffected by buybacks. The one-year figure compares two month-ends. Rates over five years and longer compare the average of the twelve months at each end, so that one unusual month at the start does not set the whole rate.
- Required growth — The annual rate that would carry the current trailing P/E back to the median of its own history within five years with the price held constant. It is arithmetic on the two figures, not an estimate of anything.
- Coverage — U.S. series from 1979; global and global ex-U.S. from 1997. Dividend yield and price to book are U.S. only, from 2005 and 1979. The universes are comparable as levels but not as history, because they do not span the same period.
- Percentiles — The share of month-ends in that series' own history with a lower reading than the current one.
- Revisions — Figures are point-in-time. If a company later restates its results, the historic reading is left exactly as first published.
Cite this page
Siblis Research. (2026). Industrials sector P/E, CAPE and EV/EBITDA — U.S. and global [Data set]. Retrieved 31 August 2026, from siblisresearch.com/data/industrials-sector-valuation/
@misc{siblis_industrials_sector_valuation,
title={Industrials sector P/E, CAPE and EV/EBITDA — U.S. and global}, author={{Siblis Research}},
year={2026}, url={https://siblisresearch.com/data/industrials-sector-valuation/},
urldate={2026-08-31}} Charts on this page may be reproduced free of charge with attribution to Siblis Research and a link to this page.