A little less than 10 years ago AOL's market value was, unbelievably, over $ 160 billion. Once combined with Time Warner the market value of the 2 companies was over $ 300 billion.
AOL went public again today and is trading at around $ 23/share. At that price the company is currently valued at $ 2.4 billion...a 98.5% drop in value since back when it acquired Time Warner.
The funny thing is AOL may finally be fairly valued now though I certainly wouldn't touch it (At today's price AOL is probably selling at 5-6x current earnings...whether just a fraction of those earning will be around in 5 years is the question). So best case it's a cigar butt.
What a difference a decade makes.
When AOL bid to buy Time Warner who in either boardroom or within the senior leadership was thinking about Google?
From this MarketWatch article:
...few were even aware that a 70-person startup called Google had set out to show small advertisements alongside Internet search results. Just five years later, Google Inc. itself had become a heavyweight on the scene and it purchased a 5% stake in AOL from Time Warner, at a price of $1 billion. Four years after that, however, Google sold the stake back to a chastened Time Warner for $283 million, while maintaining control of the inner workings of AOL's search engine through a partnership.
Back in 2000 when AOL was valued at over $ 160 billion the company was earning approximately $ 1 billion per year giving it a PE of ~160. So, as an investor, you were paying $ 160 to buy $ 1 of earnings for a company with a suspect economic moat.
The contrast of AOL at the time with Google today is significant. Google will earn over $ 7 billion this year and is in a position to grow that substantially in coming years. So while Google's $185 billion market value is slightly higher than AOL's at the time, it's earning capacity is already 7x higher and looks more durable. It also has $ 22 billion of cash with no debt. Now that may not be cheap...but a case can certainly be made for that price in my view.
Most importantly, at least for now, Google appears to have a wide economic moat. Now whether that moat will become wider or shrink over time is much more difficult to judge considering how fast the world they operate in changes. Still, I wouldn't bet against them over the short to medium run.
Adam
This site does not provide investing recommendations as that comes down to individual circumstances. Instead, it is for generalized informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. Visitors should always do their own research and consult, as needed, with a financial adviser that's familiar with the individual circumstances before making any investment decisions. Bottom line: The opinions found here should never be considered specific individualized investment advice and never a recommendation to buy or sell anything.
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Applying Newton's Fourth Law
Origin of Newton's 4th Law?
"Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, 'I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.' If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases." - Warren Buffett
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Find good businesses; buy at nice discounts to value; stay within limits & stick to what's understandable (necessarily unique for each investor); minimize trading, frictional costs, & errors of all kinds.
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A temperamental market pretty much assures it.
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This site's emphasis? Put simply, it's on finding and buying -- with the long-term in mind -- good businesses at a plain discount to conservatively estimated value; it's on selling shares of those well-bought high quality business reluctantly. The view here is that selling makes sense only when core economics become permanently impaired, prospects have been misjudged, market price not just somewhat but, instead, meaningfully exceed per share intrinsic value, or opportunity costs are high. Buy/sell decisions aren't just an opportunity to increase returns; they're also an opportunity to make mistakes. It's easy to overemphasize the former and forget the latter. The focus here is on minimizing trading, frictional costs, and errors of all kinds; it's on staying comfortably within realistically assessed limits. First and foremost is the view that an investor should never make a specific investment based upon what someone else thinks. In other words, what makes sense to own is necessarily unique for each investor and it'd be unwise to not act accordingly. So, more generally, this site simply attempts to better understand some useful principles and ideas in context of investment. It's about, in a practical sense, what tends to work over the long haul as well as what, at times, gets the investor into trouble. It's not about grand theories in finance and economics. These too often distract from what matters or, worse yet, lead to costly misjudgments. As a result, they are mostly viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism here. Otherwise, the best thinking across disciplines should be learned well then put to good use in a way that's uniquely suitable.
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Notable Quote
"Warren and I have not made our way in life by making successful macroeconomic predictions and betting on our conclusions.
Our system is to swim as competently as we can and sometimes the tide will be with us and sometimes it will be against us. But by and large we don't much bother with trying to predict the tides because we plan to play the game for a long time.
I recommend to all of you exactly the same attitude.
It's kind of a snare and a delusion to outguess macroeconomic cycles... ...very few people do it successfully and some of them do it by accident. When the game is that tough, why not adopt the other system of swimming as competently as you can and figuring that over a long life you'll have your share of good tides and bad tides?" - Charlie Munger
Our system is to swim as competently as we can and sometimes the tide will be with us and sometimes it will be against us. But by and large we don't much bother with trying to predict the tides because we plan to play the game for a long time.
I recommend to all of you exactly the same attitude.
It's kind of a snare and a delusion to outguess macroeconomic cycles... ...very few people do it successfully and some of them do it by accident. When the game is that tough, why not adopt the other system of swimming as competently as you can and figuring that over a long life you'll have your share of good tides and bad tides?" - Charlie Munger