Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) & Three Stocks Near 52-Week Highs Worth Selling

Shutterstock Inc (NYSE:SSTK) is an online marketplace that provides businesses with more than 25 million different images to use in their advertising. Given the tricky nature of copyrights, it actually has the chance to be a somewhat disruptive company in the space when times are good. The problem is that things aren’t really that good, with cost-cutting being the primary driver of companies’ profits at the moment. Cost-cutting environments are not the time to consider investing in advertising companies of any form.

Then there’s Shutterstock’s valuation, which places it at a whopping 47 times forward earnings, 20 times book value, and roughly seven times next year’s sales figures. It’s not astronomical by any means — especially for an online ad marketplace — but it’s also a bit frothy considering that sales growth is forecast to dip from 29% to 23% next year. It’s a name I’ll certainly revisit in due time, but for now I’d say this picture is worth one word: sell.

Foolish roundup
This week was all about dissecting good business models with a chance to outperform over the long run that are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time for the next couple of years.

The article 3 Stocks Near 52-Week Highs Worth Selling originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Sean Williams owns shares of Bank of America, but has no material interest in any other companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America, Choice Hotels International, and Rock-Tenn.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.