Ashton Invests
Long-Term Equity Investor, Fundamental Stock Research
Many high-quality stocks still trade at deep discounts even with the S&P 500 just 2% below its all-time high. Uber, Nu, AppLovin, Inter, American Express, Klarna, SoFi, MercadoLibre and Booking trade at 6-32x 2027 earnings with five-year revenue CAGRs of 11-58%. Brookfield trades at 15x 2027 distributable earnings, with an 18% five-year growth rate. Consensus price targets include $101 for Uber, $501 for AppLovin and $2,200 for MercadoLibre. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com … Show more
Low forward earnings multiples across eleven stocks cannot persist indefinitely. Nvidia trades near 17.5x, its lowest in over a decade; Oracle near 15x, its lowest in six years. Uber is at 17x, Broadcom 19x, Vistra 15x, AppLovin 14.5x, TSMC 19x, Forgent Power Solutions 18x, Nokia 19.5x, American Express 17x and Western Digital 14x. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
ServiceNow's growth looks likely to keep slowing, yet it trades at 50x 2027 GAAP EPS versus 20-25x for Microsoft, Google and Amazon growing as fast or faster. Subscription revenue grew about 21%, but the customer base is flat, so growth relies on upselling modules. Operating margin dipped and stock-based pay rose. Customers are mixed on its AI products and delay over price. Big SaaS firms near 20% growth often slide faster than expected, and its long-term targets look hard to reach. x.com x.comÂ
Ten quality stocks are worth being greedy on while the market sells the fear, given their drawdowns from all-time highs: Microsoft 28%, ServiceNow 47%, Netflix 45%, Uber 25%, Oracle 54%, Meta 13%, Spotify 37%, Salesforce 54%, Shopify 30% and SoFi 39%. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Quality growers with 10%+ revenue growth still trade under 20x operating cash flow, so uncertainty is a time to put money to work. Forward two-year revenue growth: Micron 110%, where the memory cycle has a ton of gas left; Zeta Global 25%, great relative to growth despite material stock pay in cash flow; Meta 21%; ServiceNow and TransMedics 20%; Microsoft 16%; Uber 13%, at an attractive 24x EV/EBITDA; Amazon 12%; Salesforce and Booking 10%. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com … Show more
Salesforce's $25 billion accelerated buyback leans on debt in a way that risks leveraging its future, as happened at Fiserv. Fiserv cut its share count 21.5% with debt-funded buybacks averaging $167 a share, and now trades under $60 as growth fell. Salesforce can afford this round with $14 billion of free cash flow, but growth is slowing to single digits, AI isn't yet transforming its ecosystem, and its goodwill-heavy book limits deals. The risk is that multiples compress and it doubles down. … Show more
A ten-year low in forward P/E makes hyperscaler valuations look more than reasonable. Goldman Sachs' chart tracks Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle as a basket. x.comÂ
Combining estimated NTM revenue growth with trailing GAAP EBITDA margin makes Palo Alto Networks, Datadog, JFrog, Rubrik and Snowflake look overvalued against forward EV/sales. Zoom, Alphabet, Oracle, AppLovin, Microsoft, Fair Isaac, Adobe, Amazon and Teradata remain undervalued on this Rule of 40 comparison; Palantir, Cloudflare and CrowdStrike remain overvalued. x.comÂ
SoFi will not get a tech multiple, so it will likely underperform about 90% of tech companies over the next five years despite being a great company. Its tech platform never grew into a larger, higher-margin share of revenue, leaving it a fast-growing bank, and its guidance includes no rate cuts. It has underperformed the S&P 500 and especially the Nasdaq 100 since its 2020 SPAC listing. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Nvidia, ServiceNow, Adobe, Broadcom, American Express, Duolingo, MercadoLibre, Oscar Health, Oracle, Zeta, Netflix and Nebius are profit machines with massive fundamental growth. Short-term prices move on hype and emotion, but long-term they follow earnings and cash flow. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ