Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

What is the potential for a stock split? She doesn't know of any plans, but companies want it to be a reasonable number so there can continue to be a retail base in the stock. The market is giving this company a lot of credit. One analyst was quoted that the rules of valuation do not apply to this company. When you hear that, you wonder how much sentiment is driving the stock. To be fair, they have done a better job of generating cash flow in the last little while. However, they have a history of spending more than they make. Right now, the market is very accommodating to them. She is not participating in this stock.

Has been wrong on this for about the last 10 years. As a value investor, it is hard for him to buy into a stock like this. He doesn’t chase growth. This stock barely makes any money, and yet it continues to go up from a valuation standpoint. He would rather wait for a better entry point.

Everyone is afraid of them. Reinvested capital back into the business is starting to show rewards. He would buy it on dips. You do not need to chase these stocks. After thanksgiving we will have the cyclicality of money flows into the market. Any correction prior to that could be in the 5% range and then we might be set up for something more substantial.

Hold or Sell?If you are holding it, you are buying it. There is no question there is a tremendous amount of growth ahead. It’s very hard to justify valuation. While he has confidence that e-commerce penetration is going to increase very gradually from 9%-10% in the US, when you look at their valuation it is difficult to justify how much earnings are going to have to grow for the valuation to come down to a market multiple. Trades at about 110X next year’s earnings. If you take that market multiple and bring it down to a multiple of about 20, that implies earnings are going to have to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 48% over 10 years. Very few companies have been able to do that.

This company is the great disruptor. What is probably most interesting is that it is not technology, it is brilliant imagination. Everything is growing nicely, but what is the downside? The downside is, where are the earnings?

This is right at the heart of one of the most important secular themes which is on-line retail. It has been a top pick and his view has not changed. The trend is very clearly higher. This can only be one part of a portfolio. There are always risks and you have to know where to exit. They have a very low cost of capital and they have gone and disrupted a lot of industries.

A great long-term play. It is expensive, but once it actually slows its growth, profitability will skyrocket. They are not going to slow their growth, they are going to keep reinvesting in their businesses. With guys like Jeff Bezos, you just want to bet with them and stay with them. Has a target price of $1250.

One of the really interesting things is their economic moat. They own the online consumer, certainly in North America. On companies with wide economic moats, don’t get too cute on what price you should pay. Recent quarterly results were actually abysmal from a net income perspective. If looking to trade in the short term, you might wait for a lower entry point, but for a long-term hold, you could buy it at this level.

They became a much more diversified company than they used to be. Then they are going to bricks and mortar grocers. His company’s research has done a really good analysis and you are in for a bumpy road. Their whole MO now is to lean it up, take the price down, and ultimately invest in the franchise which gives them a point-of-sale and a whole bunch of infrastructure that they needed and wanted. But to beat out Kroger, Safeway and Target, they are going to price competitively, and those guys are going to have a really tough time. This is going to take some time as they have some pretty fierce competition in the grocery space. It is probably a little pricey right now, but the model and the franchise is absolutely stellar.

Ali Baba (BABA-N) or Amazon (AMZN-Q)? Both are online retailers. As a value investor, it is very difficult for her to own either. If she had to choose one, it would be this because they have the Cloud service business, which is very profitable. That sector is growing very fast and the penetration rate is quite low. Their retail side generates very, very low operating margins, but it is being more than offset by their web service offering. Growing very, very quickly and are investing. They are really focused on generating profits, but are reinvesting in their business.

Amazon (AMZN-Q) or Ali Baba (BABA-N)? He would add to both of these now, for 3 reasons. #1 the pullback. #2 it is a longer-term great story and #3 you have an $.80 Cdn$, which you don’t see very often.

The problem is how to value this. It’s not cheap on any metric that you can come up with. A company he would love to own. If he saw a serious material pullback, he’d be all over it. At this type of valuation, it is impossible for him to buy the name. He would recommend you look at other technology names that are trading at much more reasonable valuations.

AMZN-Q vs. BABA-Q. He likes them both. It is always better to buy them in a correction. But they both look like they could go higher. He suggests making a partial buy now. BABA-N looks exceptionally good because it is centric on Asia. BABA-N also gives you a Paypal equivalent. AMZN-Q is mostly North America.

Preeminent growth stock. Solid price momentum, but it came off a little bit recently. It is very expensive. 50 times cash flow and a low ROE of 10 times. 240 times trailing price earnings. These stocks can have fairly substantial corrections.

It is a large portion of the index so there is a lot of ETF trading. The price is hard to value. Sometimes they have earnings and sometimes they don’t. Alibaba has the backing of the government of China and so he prefers this. It has a much better chance than AMZN-Q in expanding into India. If you want AMZN-Q then buy it in portions and watch Alibaba.