Utilities sector valuation
The U.S. utilities sector has the lowest price to book of the eleven sectors, at 2.17 times — and that reading sits higher than 84% of its own history since 1979.
Cheap against the market on the measure that matters most here, expensive against itself. For a business whose profits are set by a regulator on the value of its assets, book value is not an accounting convention. It is the thing being regulated.
United States The four headline readings below are for the U.S. utilities sector. The same six measures for the global and global ex-U.S. utilities sectors are in the table that follows.
| Measure | United States | Global | Global ex-U.S. | U.S. premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trailing P/E | 18.80 | 17.32 | 15.90 | +18% |
| Forward P/E | 16.60 | 15.58 | 14.57 | +14% |
| CAPE | 21.65 | 21.19 | 20.70 | +5% |
| EV/EBITDA | 12.67 | 11.39 | 10.22 | +24% |
| Price to book | 2.17 | — | — | — |
| Dividend yield | 2.98% | — | — | — |
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 1.15 times their own inflation-adjusted decade average, so the two lines track each other closely and the level of both is what moves.
The same four measures, side by side in each market published. The American premium is one of the narrowest of the eleven sectors on every measure shown.
| Year | Trailing P/E | CAPE |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 21.29 | 22.82 |
| 2024 | 18.78 | 21.01 |
| 2023 | 18.47 | 18.33 |
| 2022 | 22.95 | 21.18 |
| 2021 | 22.66 | 23.01 |
| 2020 | 21.24 | 21.83 |
| 2019 | 21.67 | 22.93 |
| 2018 | 16.75 | 19.17 |
| 2017 | 19.03 | 19.78 |
| 2016 | 18.39 | 18.65 |
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
Why price to book means more here than anywhere else
A regulated utility does not set its own prices. A regulator allows it to charge enough to earn a specified return on the capital it has invested in poles, wires, pipes and plant — the rate base — and that capital is, to a first approximation, the book value on its balance sheet.
So the price-to-book ratio has a direct reading that it has in no other sector. A ratio of one says the market expects the company to earn exactly its allowed return, no more. Anything above one says the market expects it to do better — because the allowed return exceeds the company's actual cost of capital, because the rate base is going to grow, or because parts of the business are not regulated at all.
The current reading is 2.17, against a median of 1.60 across 561 months and a record of 2.61 in February 2026. That places it at the 84th percentile of its own history.
Against the other ten sectors it is the lowest, which is what you would expect from an asset-heavy business with a capped return. Against its own past it is not low at all, and the second comparison is the relevant one.
The income has narrowed
The dividend yield is 2.98%, the second highest of the eleven sectors. Against its own record it is a different picture: the median since 2005 is 3.37%, the high is 4.96% in February 2009, and the current reading sits at the 17th percentile.
For a sector held largely for income that is the most direct statement of the valuation available, and it agrees with price to book rather than contradicting it. Both say the same thing: still the defensive end of the market, and no longer cheap within it.
The smallest international premium in the market
U.S. utilities trade +18% above the rest of the world on trailing earnings — the second smallest premium of the eleven sectors — with +5% on CAPE and +24% on EV/EBITDA.
There is a reason this sector's premium is the narrow one. A regulated monopoly earning an allowed return on a domestic asset base is much the same proposition in Frankfurt, Tokyo or Ohio. It does not benefit from scale across borders, it does not have a global brand, and its growth is a function of how much capital its regulator lets it deploy. The features that make American companies in other sectors worth a large premium mostly do not apply.
Where the premium is wider on EV/EBITDA than on earnings, the explanation is the balance sheet: these are among the most heavily indebted companies in any market, by design, and a measure that adds debt to the price will separate them further than one that ignores it.
The measures that work least well
The trailing P/E is 18.80 and CAPE is 21.65, at the 91st percentile of its history since 1984. Both are reasonable here — earnings are steady, and the worst twelve-month fall on record is -52.9%, in April 2001, the third mildest of the eleven.
EV/EBITDA is the weaker of the set. Not for the reason it fails in financials, where debt is the raw material rather than the financing, but because a utility's debt load is a regulatory and rate-base decision rather than a free choice, and EBITDA is struck before the depreciation of assets that genuinely do wear out. The measure is published on the same basis as every other sector; it is simply less informative here than price to book or the yield.
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. |
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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 utilities 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.
- Price to book — Aggregate market capitalisation over aggregate book value. Published for the U.S. sectors only.
- Dividend yield — Aggregate dividends paid over the previous twelve months against aggregate market capitalisation. Published for the U.S. sectors only.
- Coverage — U.S. earnings series from 1979; global and global ex-U.S. from 2006. Dividend yield and price to book from 2005 and 1979. The universes are comparable as levels but not as history, because they do not span the same period.
- 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.
- 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). Utilities sector P/E, price to book and dividend yield — U.S. and global [Data set]. Retrieved 31 August 2026, from siblisresearch.com/data/utilities-sector-valuation/
@misc{siblis_utilities_sector_valuation,
title={Utilities sector P/E, price to book and dividend yield — U.S. and global}, author={{Siblis Research}},
year={2026}, url={https://siblisresearch.com/data/utilities-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.