Here's my attempt at analysing BLD per Benjamin Graham's...

Here's my attempt at analysing BLD per Benjamin Graham's "Enterprising Investor" criteria :

1. P/E <9: Fail. FY18 Diluted EPS (ex. significant items. Both Continuing and Discontinued Ops) = 40.2cps. Refer note 11 in FY18 report. 5.13/0.402, so P/E = 12.76. As people say above, this 'should' improve looking forwards, based on the Forecasts. It should be noted that all the below criteria (2. to 6.) were applied by Graham, after first compiling a list of stocks with P/E = 9 or less. He does mention later, that increasing P/E to 10 or less, would give an expanded list of stocks for further investigation - but it's still a Fail. 

2. Financial Condition a) Current Assets > 1.5 x Current Liabilities: Pass. 1,738 / (1.5x995) = 1.16. Note this Fails Grahams' criteria for Defensive Investor, which is 2xCL. It should also be noted that the 1.5 CL ratio result has improved significantly from FY17 (using 'restated' figures given in FY18 report) : 1,770 / (1.5*1,473) = 0.80. So it's fair to say that BLD's made great progress in the last year, improving their finances.

2. Financial Condition b) Debt <110% of Net Current Assets: Fail (miserably). 2,507/(1,738-995) = 3.37. As in a) a FY17 comparison was performed, resulting in 2,164/(1770-1473) = 7.28. So again, impressive Y-O-Y improvement (but still a miserable fail). The debt level is easily described when considering the Headwaters acquisition - but depends if one is comfortable with this.

3. No Earnings Deficit over the Last 5 Years: Pass. Data from Yahoo Finance. Note that 1 year prior to this selection window, namely 2013, did have an earnings deficit though - so this Fails Grahams' criteria for Defensive Investor (looking back 10 years). I didn't look back further than 2013.

4. Some Current Dividend: Pass. This one was pretty easy.

5. Current Earnings Greater than those 5 Years ago: Pass. 2018 = 40.2cps (ex-sig. items, both cont. and discont. Ops.) vs. 2014 = 21.8cps (also ex-sig. items, both cont. and discont. Ops.). A multiple of 1.84 = nice: non-compounded 16.9% EPS increase on average, over the last 5 years.

6. Price < 120% of Net Tangible Assets: Fail (miserably). $5.13 / {(Net Assets - Intangibles - Financial Assets (not 100% sure if this should be deducted? Anyone confirm?)) / # of Shares Outstanding} = 5.13/ {(5,731 - 3,395 - 33 (?)) / 1,172.3} = 5.13/1.96 = 2.62. I don't see how they're going to meet this criteria in the foreseeable future, given the amount of intangibles on the Balance Sheet. See Note 16 in FY18 report for # shares on issue (1,172,331,924).

I think that if one has a long-term perspective, BLD is good at these levels. Having said that, the Australian market has the jitters atm over residential housing / apartment prices - so this could well result in further share price drops in the short-term, based on market sentiment. If it drops significantly from these levels, that's creating a very good LT opportunity IMO, for the patient investor.

What is Boral's exposure to the Australian residential market - some Concrete, Bricks, Roofing and Timber (combined external Revenue of $513M (179+182+152) and these #'s are definitely not all residential - unfortunately EBIT or EBITDA breakdown not provided) and the USG plasterboard JV (Boral share of $577M Revenue in Aust./NZ and also not all residential). Even if we assume 100% of these figures are affected by an Australian housing / apartment slowdown (which clearly is not accurate) (513+577)/5,869 = 18.5% of BLD revenues.

That leaves the remaining 81% of BLD revenue from Australian Infrastructure (good outlook), Overseas USG JV (FY 18 was so-so (overseas), but BLD have forecast improvement for '19. Current strategic review creates further uncertainties - but BLD are in control of how they want to play this) and Boral USA (which should be much stronger in the medium-term IMO, though no doubt will take hard work to get there).