Listed here are data for five companies. These data are for the companies’ 2016 fiscal years. The market price per share is the closing price of the companies’ stock as of March 24, 2017. Except for market price per share, all amounts are in thousands. The shares outstanding number is the weighted-average number of shares the company used to compute basic earnings per share.

Required
a. Compute the earnings per share (EPS) for each company.
b. Compute the P/E ratio for each company.
c. Using the P/E ratios, rank the companies’ stock in the order that the stock market appears to value the companies, from most valuable to least valuable. Identify reasons the ranking based on P/E ratios may not represent the market’s optimism for some companies.
d. Compute the book value per share for each company.
e. Compare each company’s book value per share to its market price per share. Based on the data, rank the companies from most valuable to least valuable.

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Stockholders' Shares Outstanding Market Price per Share 845.61 252,301.00 81.23 112.12 49.68 Net Earnings Company Equity $ 19,285,000 $ 2,371,000 Amazon.com Berkshlre Hathaway ExxonMobil PepsiCo Verizon Communications 474,000 1,644 4,177,000 1,439,000 4,080,000 24,074,000 286,359,000 7,840,000 173,830,000 24,032,000 13,127,000