A Look Into Amazon's Price Over Earnings

As the share price decreased on Friday, shareholders are looking into Amazon.com Inc. AMZN’s price to earnings ratio.

In the current market session, the share price increased by 1.5%. Over the past month, Amazon.com stock increased by 0.99%, and in the past year, by 6.28%. With performance like this, long-term shareholders are optimistic but others are more likely to look into the price-to-earnings ratio to see if the stock might be overvalued.

Assuming that all other factors are held constant, this could present itself as an opportunity for shareholders trying to capitalize on the higher share price. The stock is currently below its 52 week high by 13.08%.

The P/E ratio is used by long-term shareholders to assess the company’s market performance against aggregate market data, historical earnings, and the industry at large. A lower P/E indicates that shareholders do not expect the stock to perform better in the future, and that the company is probably undervalued. It shows that shareholders are less willing to pay a high share price, because they do not expect the company to exhibit growth, in terms of future earnings.

Most often, an industry will prevail in a particular phase of a business cycle, than other industries.

Compared to the aggregate P/E ratio of 8.08 in the internet retail industry, Amazon.com has a higher P/E ratio of 82.58. Shareholders might be inclined to think that Amazon might perform better than its industry group. It’s also possible that the stock is overvalued.

There are many limitations to price to earnings ratio. It is sometimes difficult to determine the nature of the earnings makeup of a company. Shareholders might not get what they're looking for, from trailing earnings.