Amazon.com, a pioneer in electronic commerce whose stock has soared and soured more than the stock of most other tech firms, has a lot going for it.
The bookseller (Stock Quote: AMZN) now offers everything from Apple computers (Stock Quote: AAPL) to exhaust systems for Harley-Davidson motorcycles (Stock Quote: HOG). The latest version of Amazon's Kindle digital reader appears to be hit. And to serve those with less inclination to read, the company is taking dead aim to become the kingpin in the mega-profitable field of electronic gaming. Last week, Amazon said it's targeting the "trade-in" market dominated by GameStop (Stock Quote: GME).
But anyone interested in Amazon as an investment has to ask whether the stock is worth more than 10 times book value and 43 times this year's projected earnings. Apple's price-to-earnings ratio is 15.6, Google's is 18.4 (Stock Quote: GOOG). Even the best performer on the S&P 500 index in the past 12 months, Family Dollar (Stock Quote: FDO), is selling for 17.4 times earnings.
While Amazon's revenue jumped 29.8% last year, when the current recession already was taking hold, analysts' consensus is that growth in net income will slip to $1.48 a share for fiscal 2009 from $1.49 in fiscal 2008. As economic growth probably will resume next year, analysts predict the online merchant's earnings will grow 29.7% in 2010, as can be seen in the accompanying statistical profile below.
Although Amazon's Kindle reader is gaining attention as a fashionable tech accessory, there's little in the firm's business model that could be mistaken for rocket science. Despite the company's attempt to protect some of its online retailing procedures with controversial patents, few real barriers exist to prevent competitors from entering its online retailing domain.
