Many companies have made both investors and founders rich. Perhaps one of the most famous billionaires is Amazon (AMZN 1.67%) founder Jeff Bezos.
When Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, he likely couldn't imagine the giant it would become. But expanding product offerings quickly made Bezos (a massive shareholder in the business) one of the richest men in the world.
As of Feb. 22, Bezos owned more than 1.1 billion shares of Amazon, which is worth over $200 billion at today's prices. So Amazon has already created one billionaire; could it have created another?
Amazon's rise was incredible
Amazon went public on May 15, 1997. If you were wise enough to buy the stock at its IPO price, you're up an astounding 183,000%.
So if you wanted to become a billionaire based on that information, you would have had to invest around $600,000 on its IPO day nearly 30 years ago. Most people wouldn't have made that bet, so the odds of anyone rising to billionaire status alongside Jeff Bezos are slim.
However, Amazon was still a great investment and certainly made many investors rich along the way. But does it have the same potential now? After all, Amazon is still a dominant business.
Amazon is still a force to be reckoned with
In its latest quarter, Amazon showed how strong its business still is. Overall sales increased by 14% year over year to $170 billion, with nearly all business units doing well. While some may see Amazon as fairly established, it has several growth wings under its roof.
Amazon's advertising and third-party seller services have both done incredible, with each segment growing 27% and 20%, respectively, in Q4. These aren't just small divisions, either. Combined, these two brought in $58.2 billion in revenue -- about one-third of Amazon's total.
Another growth segment that used to drive the business but hasn't done as well recently is Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is the largest cloud computing provider, which is key at a time when many companies are looking to increase their computing power to do tasks like data collection or artificial intelligence (AI) model training.
In 2023, AWS dealt with many customers wanting to optimize their spending, which hurt sales in the short term but strengthened customer relationships, which will pay off in the long term. Management sees this trend diminishing and AI increasing, which will be great news for investors in 2024.
Although most consumers recognize and interact with Amazon's commerce division, it's one of the slower-growing parts of its business. Online store growth was 9% in Q4, which is quite good compared to the growth this segment has displayed in recent quarters. But it's far from the best reason to own Amazon stock.
Amazon is clearly doing well, but is the price right to buy the stock now?
Amazon's stock isn't cheap, but it's not expensive either
Amazon is one of the more difficult companies to value. You could use a traditional metric like price-to-earnings (P/E), but that would give an unsatisfactory result, since Amazon wasn't optimized for profits over the last 12 months. If you use a forward-looking P/E metric, Amazon's stock still looks quite pricey.
AMZN PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts
This also doesn't do Amazon justice, as some of its divisions (most notably its international business) don't produce a profit. Investors must consider this, as it will provide a significant profit boost once Amazon has built out its international resources.
As a result, I'll use the price-to-sales (P/S) metric to look at Amazon's stock valuation.
AMZN PS Ratio data by YCharts
Amazon's stock has been on a great run since the start of 2023, but has only attained levels last seen at the 2020 bottom. So, from a historical perspective, Amazon's stock still looks cheap.
If Amazon's revenue growth continues to increase, today's price would be a bargain for the stock. But we'll learn more when Amazon reports its Q1 results on April 30.
I still think Amazon provides a solid-enough investment proposition to buy now. Still, I wouldn't blame investors if they want to ensure the current trends are maintained by waiting until after earnings are released.
