Giorgos
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« on: October 22, 2010, 07:53:14 PM » |
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Whenever a stock can potentially drop 50% and still be considered overvalued, that's when you know the stock is a bubble. Amazon (AMZN) far surpassed bubble territory ages ago but investors still continue to plunge billions of dollars into the company. If the stock were to crash to $80 a share today from $164, it would still be trading at a significantly richer valuation than Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) or even Research in Motion (RIMM).
While Amazon continues to execute at a very high level ? yesterday it reported better than expected sales growth of 39% and earnings growth of 16% -- the stock still trades at a very lofty 67 P/E ratio. That's more than triple Apple's 20.1 P/E ratio, or Google's 24.6 P/E ratio.
Even more striking is that the company trades at 2.31 times its expected 5-year growth rate, which indicates that the stock has gotten way ahead of itself. Ideally, a company should trade at no more than a 1:1 PEG ratio unless the company has a consistently proven track record (like Apple) of far exceeding analyst expectations.
By comparison, Apple only trades at 1.11 times its 5-year expected growth rate, Google at 1.23 times and Research in Motion at only half its expected growth rate. Yet, all of these companies are expected to grow at more or less the same level. Only Amazon trades at a valuation that far exceeds any semblance of reality.
Analysts expect Amazo n to report earnings of roughly $2.59 in earnings per share on $33.3 billion in revenue in fiscal 2010 compared to $3.57 in EPS on $41.63 billion in revenue for fiscal 2011. Based on these estimates, the company is expected to grow at a roughly 37.8% pace next year. Yet, the stock trades nearly 46 times next year's earnings. While Amazon is trading at only a slight premium to its 12-month expected growth rate, the loftiness in its valuation arises out of three distinct issues.
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