Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
We have previously noted the massive market cap inflation and then stupendous collapse of the Delirious Dozen of 2000.
The latter included Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Intel, GE, Yahoo, AIG and Juniper Networks - plus four others which didn't survive (Lucent, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Nortel).
Together they represented a classic blow-off top in the context of a central bank corrupted stock market. When the bubble neared its asymptote in early 2000, the $3.8 trillion of market cap represented by these 12 names was capturing most of the oxygen left in the casino. That is, the buying frenzy had narrowed to a smaller and smaller group of momo names.
That severe concentration pattern was starkly evident during the 40 months between Greenspan's December 1996 "irrational exuberance" speech and April 2000 (when he told the Senate no bubble was detectable). In that interval, the group's combined market cap soared from $600 billion to $3.8 trillion.
That represented, in turn, a virtually impossible 75% per annum growth rate for what were already mega-cap stocks. As it happened, in fact, $2.7 trillion or 71% of the group's bubble peak market cap vanished during the next two years.
What we didn't mention yesterday, however, is that this bubble top intumescence never really came back. In fact, the market cap of the eight surviving companies---all of which have continued to grow----today stands at just $1.3 trillion or 34% of the 17-years ago peak.
Needless to say, that's because the market no longer affords the Delirious Dozen of 2000 valuation multiples that are even remotely in the same bubblicious zip code.
Thus, the eight survivors posted combined net income of $52.3 billion during the LTM period ending in September 2017. On the far side of the 1999-2000 tech bubble, therefore, current earnings turn out to be worth 25X---not the 75X recorded back then.
We revisit the rise and fall of these turn of the century high flyers because we believe the same process of market narrowing into a diminishing number of momo names is exactly what is happening again as we reach the asymptote of this latest and greatest central bank fueled bubble.
Not surprisingly, their combined market cap has soared from $1.7 trillion to $4.0 trillion during the last 40 months in a pattern which is highly reminiscent of the last go round. And for our money, that $2.3 trillion gain represents the same kind of bottled air.
Thus, Amazon is now valued at $550 billion and thereby trades at 293X its $1.9 billion of LTM net income. But all of that net income is attributable to its rent-a-cloud service (AWS) which is arguably worth $100 billion on a standalone basis.
That is to say, the great Bezos E-commerce juggernaut is implicitly valued at $450 billion, yet has not generated a dime of profit from the scorched earth its has left behind in retail land. That's what we call bottled air.
Likewise, Broadcom trades at 246X net income and Netflix is valued at 194X. These companies may well be the equal of Cisco and Intel as innovators and value generators with a long life of growth ahead.
But both are challenged by ferocious competitors, and have no more chance of sustaining their current absurd valuation multiples than did Cisco (200X then, 19X now) or Intel (60X then, 16X now).
Next consider Salesforce (CRM), which is currently valued at $77 billion, and Tesla, which sports a market cap of $54 billion. Yet both had large net losses during the latest 12 months. In fact, during the last five years, CRM has posted cumulative net losses of $650 million and Tesla has lost $3.3 billion.
Even if these two do manage to avoid the fate of Nortel and Global Crossing, the red ink stained charts below suggests that earning into their combined market cap of $131 billion will take more than a few miracles.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-26/david-stockman-derides-delirious-dozen-2017?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
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