221–230 of 272 posts
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Or perhaps P/E is not the end-all-be-all of metrics for judging value?
I completely agree, however, it is still a useful metric. And when a stock has a P/E of 910 the growth rate that the underlying business must grow at in order to justify such a price is astounding.
If capital expenditures are reduced just a bit, or if margins are improved slightly, the E part of the fraction will jump and P/E will fall massively.
All of that being said, there are still plenty of things that could go wrong for AMZN.
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dragonwriter, btgeekboy, mindcrime - thanks, I never heard of that (I live outside US). A few minutes of Googling didn't turn out what I was looking for though. I can see an "upload and print" feature on FedEx website, I can see a dedicated mobile app that apparently can print files via FedEx... ... but what I was looking for is something that pretends to be a normal printer, so when i do File->Print in Word or Photo…
http://www.fedex.com/us/small-business/updates/February2011/...
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What lasting change has Musk effected? The potential is certainly there, but the average person's life isn't much different than it would be had Musk never existed.
Uh, the private space industry? Really, you don't see what is happening here? Who else mounted a private space company able to dock with that of the global governmental effort that is the ISS?
But. They're not there yet. At the moment, they're currently providing a launch facility that is equivalent to services offered by a number of other vendors, albeit at a slightly lower (currently) price. And the service they're providing really does not directly impact on 99.9% of the lives going on around you.
Yes, their reusable launch system program is way ahead of anything else anyone is doing, but it's still experimental, and isn't yet providing benefits to even their direct customers, let alone anyone else.
Musk hasn't made lasting change yet with SpaceX. I really, really hope he does. Becoming a multiplanetry species would be the biggest thing for Humanity since, well, fire, standing upright, or speech, and Musk seems to be the person best placed to make that happen in the next 20-40-odd years.
But he's not done it yet.
$20 million income is generating $160 billion market capitalization which is very high IMO
If the net worth is about $40 billion or more and growing (almost tripled since 2009?), and revenues are growing (almost tripled since 2009?), and it's not hugely inefficient (has relatively steady or increasing profits instead of increasing losses) - I don't understand why people think that sounds like failure.
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As the article points out, they don't. By running the business this way they are constantly building / growing new businesses but during a downturn they just build more slowly (rather than lose money). It is a very different way of operating but one which has provided some interesting benefits for them. Nominally a business uses profits to either pay dividends or fund unexpected opportunities (like buying some small…
If they don't want a profit, what's their motivation for existing?
I listened to a talk by Amazon's CTO, Werner Vogels, where he was explaining that Amazon's entire strategy is to build an infrastructure for itself, then rent that infrastructure out to its competitors. That way, increased competition can actually fuel your growth. The talk was about APIs, but Amazon views APIs as a general term: "Fulfilled by Amazon" is an example of a non-technical API. Likewise, I think Amazon's s…
At some point, when you're handling all the customer money, and the merchant money, and the supplier money, you become the ultimate middle man as everyone owes you money and the actual amount of money you need to move gets small and smaller because you're just netting internal accounts. There must be some massive savings (read profit) to be made there, when the entire economy is really just Amazon.
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As the article points out, they don't. By running the business this way they are constantly building / growing new businesses but during a downturn they just build more slowly (rather than lose money). It is a very different way of operating but one which has provided some interesting benefits for them. Nominally a business uses profits to either pay dividends or fund unexpected opportunities (like buying some small…
If they don't want a profit, what's their motivation for existing?
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Thanks. The Prize by Daniel Yergin isn't bad either.
The Prize doesn't get into Rockefeller's business decisions as much as Titan though. If that's what you're after, Titan is a better choice.
Above and beyond that, simply as a history of the most important substance in all of human history beyond sheer biological necessities, it's utterly fascinating. It's principally through Yergin's work that I came to pretty much diametrically opposite conclusions of the future of energy from his.
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The documentary series "The Men Who Built America" is a really well done overview of some of these guys.
The problem with these american HC documentaries is that they are employ certain stylistic means which make them impossible to watch for me.