Q: Is Google's stock too expensive to buy?
A: Google can do no wrong in the eyes of its investors. But the online advertising company's shares definitely reflect Wall Street's high expectations.
Google's ability to amass information about its users and sell it as an asset other tech companies are struggling to match. Wall Street, too, has high hopes on how much Google can make.
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Analysts are calling for the company to earn an adjusted $52.76 a share this year, which would be a 20% increase from 2013 profit, says S&P CapitalIQ.
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Google is trading for a lofty 33 times its earnings over the past twelve months. That's high relative to the 17 P-E of the market and 16 P-E of the technology sector, Reuters says, indicating the stock isn't a buy.
But while the valuation on a discounted cash flow basis isn't cheap, it's not overly expensive either, says NewConstructs.
Google sports a strong return on invested capital, a measure of how effective a company is at driving profit from the money invested in it. But its free cash flow yield and price to its book value, or rough measure of its net worth, are not all that compelling, NewConstructs says.
The question is whether Google can continue to grow as online search matures and consumers start asking more questions about how their personal data are being sold.
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