Amazon's (AMZN +2.17%) share-price gains over time have made the e-commerce and cloud computing company an investment legend. In this episode of "The Rank" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on April 11, Fool.com contributors Brian Withers, Jason Hall, and Matt Frankel discuss how the tech behemoth's past performance won't stop it from generating amazing future returns.
Brian Withers: I think everybody knows what Amazon's all about. What I think is super cool about Amazon is its deep pockets and it's willing to fund and go all-in. I think it was about five years ago, Amazon said, you know what? FedEx and UPS really aren't going to be able to scale with us and certainly the Postal Service, so we need to create our own last-mile delivery. Holy cow, they have a fleet of airlines, they have a gazillion trucks. You see the Amazon trucks coming down the street and really have done an incredible job of investing in that business and doing something that nobody's ever done before. AWS was a gleam in Amazon's eye, and it was on the other revenue line for a long time. By the time they split it out, it was like a $6 or $8 billion business, several times larger than its biggest competitor at the time, which was Rackspace. Amazon has this incredible ability to see something and go after it. These robots that it's released, just before Christmastime last year, a little bit of a laughingstock. But you know what? This is their first foray into that and that could be a really big business for them 20 years from now. I ranked it near the top because of its optionality.
Jason Hall: Having companies that make mistakes is good. If you own companies that only do things perfectly, it means they're not taking on enough risk. Matt, along with Brian, you rank this No. 2.
Matt Frankel: Yeah, like Brian just said, the optionality. In 20 years, I think Amazon could, but they could be dominating healthcare, they could be dominating a bunch of different industries that they're not currently really big in. Who knows what they could do? Amazon could be the world's first $10 trillion company. If you were to ask me which of these on this list could eventually command a $10 trillion valuation, it would be Amazon, No. 1, hands down. More than Microsoft. I love the optionality. I think it's a really well-run business. I like how they are not afraid to reinvest aggressively in the business, even at these levels. There's only 15% of retail is e-commerce. I could see them going after that other 85%.
Hall: Let's go ahead and get it on the schedule for our 2032 edition of "The Rank." Amazon at $10 trillion, is it trading for a conglomerate discount? I think that's the company's future, I really do. Right now, it's break it up because of monopolistic anticompetitive stuff. But is it going to be trading for a discount because it's going to be doing so many things.
