Thursday, March 08, 2007

Why Amazon.com Stock could be Up Substantially by Year End

If you have been a long time reader of my articles, you will know that I don't make specific stock recommendations, but I do come up with stock ideas worth further investigation. In addition, you may notice that when I cover various sectors or industries, I often disclose that I own a particular stock in that group. The reason this occurs is that I have enough stocks in my trading account to make Jim Cramer speechless; I had 69 different stocks by last count [the reason I have so many is a topic for another article]. Therefore, I am always looking to write about either stocks that I don't own or industries and sectors that I don't own stocks in, so that it doesn't look like I'm tooting my own horn, or my own stock, as it were.
Therefore I was quite happy to discover a stock that looks very favorable, that I don't own, and that is Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). Here are some positive bullet points about Amazon:
1. Quarterly revenue growth year over year was 33.9%
2. Return on equity is 56.13%
3. Stock has a reasonable price sales ratio of 1.5.
4. The stock, which closed at 38.10, is within a couple points of its three month low.
5. The company just began their video download-to-TV service in conjunction with TiVo Inc. (TIVO) [Disclosure: I do own some TIVO which I have had for several years. I just can't seem to get away from my stock holdings].
SIDENOTE: Is there a merger in the works between Amazon and TiVo? I checked the headlines for Amazon for the last two days and out of the 20 headlines, TiVo was listed 8 times in the headline, and Amazon was listed once in the headline.
6. Amazon's Unbox software is Vista compatible.
7. Analysts' opinions are 11 sells versus 6 buys, the worst ratio it's had in the last three months. Out of favor so maybe a contrarian buy now?
8. Gross annual profit up 20.4% over the prior year.
9. Interest expense has been dropping significantly over the last three years, down 15% in '06 from '05.
10. Cash and current assets are increasing.
11. Long term debt is decreasing.
12. International sales have increased 28% in '06 versus '05.

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