Valuecruncher's  Instablog

Umair Haque is an on-line strategist - we are big fans of his work. His latest column on the Harvard Business Blog focuses on finance. It is written as a letter to Google ($GOOG). In it he asks if they can build a better global financial architecture. It is his usual great stuff. At the end of the piece he lists three examples of companies on the “leading edge of a revolution“. One of the three examples that he uses is Valuecruncher.

We have previously looked at a view of the future of on-line finance. In that analysis we looked a range of scenarios:

It has been a crazy 15 months for the Apple ($AAPL) share price. On the 22 August 2008 $AAPL was trading at $176.79. By 16 January 2009 $AAPL had dropped to $82.33 - down over half (53% down) in under five months. Today $AAPL closed at $190.01 - up over 130% in under nine months. The graph below shows the closing prices over the period. So what do we think about $AAPL?

We have been participants and observers of the on-line finance  space for a period of time now. As part of that we regularly examine our view of the competitive landscape. We have decided to share some of our views on where the very broad industry may be headed. This isn’t company specific – very much the high-level perspective.

Starbucks ($SBUX) is in an interesting position. You would expect premium coffee purchases to be down in the current economic climate. The company has also just raised prices on some beverages. Yet $SBUX is currently trading toward the top of their 52-week range at US$19.35. Time to have a bit of a look.

Today is five years since Google ($GOOG) had their initial public offering (IPO). That seems amazing to those of us that follow the markets.  In some ways the $GOOG IPO process feels like another time, long ago.  In other ways five years is but a heartbeat. The New York Times has a great piece looking back at the IPO and the skepticism around it. As I said - somehow it feels a long time ago.

After the IPO $GOOG was had a market capitalization of US$27 billion and five years later that has risen to US$140 billion - it has been higher.  Over five years $GOOG’s market capitalization has grown at a compound annual growth rate of just under 39%. That is pretty impressive. The graph below shows the closing prices for $GOOG over the last five years.

At Valuecruncher we have an interactive analyst report for $GOOG. Based on our discounted cash flow analysis - we believe $GOOG is currently fairly valued.

Disclosure: no position