ASOS
I notice today that shares in the on-line retailer ASOS fell 11% or so when it announced it was only going to grow sales by 25%. This is classically what happens when a share is priced on the basis of future profits growth, not current earnings. So although ASOS sells clothes, its shares are valued more like a tech company.
A little basic analysis
Bloomberg, the market data and analysis business, is estimating that profits at ASOS might make GBP100 million this year. Not bad, but not much on a market capitalisation of over GP4 billion. The price to earnings ratio published in over 70! Norms are in the range 10 to 20, by the way.
I also read that the company will spend about 3 times the profits estimate on new warehousing capacity (not in the UK, of course, because of Brexit). I did not quickly find out where it gets the money to pay for that.
A graph of the share price shows that investors who bought in after the last price crash would have done very nicely, but in my view the valuation is propped up by momentum not any recognised sign of good value or dividend prospects. You get a 1% or so yield for taking a huge risk.
Many of the shares will be held in large blocks by investing institutions and if they sell off the momentum reversal will see the price fall like a stone. A 50% loss is more than feasible, although I have no way of knowing that will actually happen. I am just using this as a classic example.
But maybe…
Some might think that the past results, the quality of the management, the changes in shopping patterns or similar mean that the share price has further to go. In the near term, that could be right. I would prefer that call to be made by a professional fund manager with access to all the latest data and maybe the opportunity to talk to the company’s top management. Best of all, I would like my fund manager to have bought the share after the last price collapse and now sold out on a large gain!
11% down?
Personally, I could tolerate my portfolio falling 11% over a few weeks in the event of a global stock market correction – what is called systemic risk, because I know that will be reversed over time and I can live on my reserve assets. But losing 11% in a day and maybe much more permanently is not a risk I think anyone should take without having plenty of other resources. I will be sticking to my portfolio of diversified funds.
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