It’s Time For An Auction: eBay Inc (EBAY) and More

After Amazon experienced twelve fold revenue increases in the past decade, Best Buy’s 258% increase seems shabby. eBay’s revenues have increased by 650% in the same time frame. If cash from operations is used to value Amazon as Daniel suggests, Amazon is actually under-valued despite this enormous growth. eBay’s 3.5% FCF yield is far more expensive than Best Buy’s 10.1%, but at least the company is growing. USA Today speculates that Best Buy will close hundreds of stores in 2013, which landed Best Buy in a compiled list of eight companies expected to have the most closures.

Many times investing comes down to perspective. Every one of these companies has an opportunity to grow, but some seem to grasp the idea better than others. The graph below shows how these stocks have performed in the past year with the S&P 500 as the bench mark.

HPQ data by YCharts

The Foolish Bottom Line…

So, here is the deal. Every investor has different ways of placing value on a company, and no two investors will see something exactly the same way. To me, Amazon and eBay have shown steady growth and great performances with no reason to believe they will stop. While I don’t own sharse of any of these companies currently, I would have to ponder changing my situation if Best Buy, J.C. Penney, or Hewlett-Packard were in my portfolio. After all, our efforts should be rewarded.

The article It’s Time For An Auction originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Tyler Wofford.

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