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“The 3 Kings of Cloud Computing: Version 2.0”

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, December 13, 2010

The Motley Fool folks have been using the “3 Kings of Cloud Computing” special report to pitch David Gardner’s Rule Breakers newsletter for a couple years now, and have occasionally even given away all three of those stock picks for free as part of their “give us your email” list building exercises — but I noticed today that the ad campaign is back and in full strength, both teasing the “3 Kings” again and teasing us that they have a “Version 2.0” with two other companies in the cloud computing space that you should buy.

For review, the original “3 Kings” from the Rule Breakers pitch were Google (GOOG), Akamai (AKAM) and VMWare (VMW), and by all accounts those are still being teased — Akamai is the company that “makes the internet fly” and VMWare is the one with the “stranglehold on a niche market that’s absolutely essential to the future of cloud computing.” The business case for these companies hasn’t changed much in the two+ years since the ad campaign started and I wrote about them, and though megacap Google’s shares are a bit more stable than the others, the prices of all three have moved in some sympathy with each other through the market crash and recovery — Google and VMWare are priced pretty similarly to where they were in August of 2008 when the ads started, though Akamai has done substantially better (for full disclosure, I own GOOG shares personally and have profiled AKAM as an “Idea of the Month” investment for the Irregulars).

But whether or not you think those stocks are worthy of your attention now (all three trade at a premium to the market, though they have also almost always done so — and they’re growing faster than the market, too), they’re pretty well known by most investors and you and I (old pals, us — right?) have chatted about them any number of times.

So who’s on their list for the “version 2.0” — the sequel in the Motley Fool Rule Breakers “Kings of Cloud Computing” franchise? Version 2.0, appropriately enough, touts two stocks — here’s the headline for the first one:

“The Rule Breaker that’s eating Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle’s lunch — and handing investors monster returns in the process”

Sounds pretty good, right? And in the next few paragraphs we get a few hints and clues … here are the excerpts to whet your appetite:

“This company started out as a top dog and first mover in another emerging area of technology, it has quietly transformed into a budding cloud computing powerhouse that’s positioned to host all of the corporate data on the Web.

“But it wasn’t its robust developer network (literally tens of thousands of developers are now invested in the success of this company) nor its 50,000-plus corporate client list that initially caught David’s eye…

“It was the fact that, like many of the other companies I’ve told you about today, all the “pros” on Wall Street claimed it was drastically overvalued — while overlooking the fact that it’d more than doubled its customer base in just over two years and more than doubled its free cash flow in just over one.

“Not to mention, it outperforms nearly every other company out there (even Google) in turning research and development investments into returns for shareholders…

“Today they sell for around $136 — meaning investors who followed David’s advice have quadrupled their money in just over a year.

“Despite an extremely tough economy, this company managed to grow sales by an impressive 25% in the most recent quarter — while adding 5,100 new customers.”

So this one, you will probably be unsurprised to hear, must be Salesforce.com (CRM) — the pioneer of business-class cloud computing, and one of the first companies to make a mint on the idea that companies would stop hosting their own software and would hire someone else to handle it. Before “cloud computing” entered the parlance, Salesforce got attention for this as pioneering the concept of “Software as a Service (SaaS).

And this is perfect for Dave Gardner’s “Rule Breakers” concepts, because he loves first-movers in a space, which I think fits CRM … but he also loves stocks that are written off as overvalued because Wall Street is a little bit afraid of the nosebleed valuations that hyper-growth stocks get. CRM trades at a FORWARD estimated PE of almost 100 (the trailing — or “actual”) PE is a mammoth 270 with the shares now at $147 (they were at $136 a few weeks back, as teased, but their good earnings and optimistic forecast last quarter moved them up further, as did their announcement that they’re launching a more direct challenge at Oracle with a new “database.com” service).

Given that valuation, with the dramatically slower growth (20-25% annually in the next few years, which gives them a PEG ratio of about 5, among the highest I’ve seen) … it’s probably no surprise that this is both a favorite of many of the momentum jockey traders and a fairly heavily shorted stock (about 12% of the float is sold short). And though I own Google and have owned Akamai and other rapid growers like Intuitive Surgical in the past, I also can’t get over my fuddy-duddy “holy crap that’s expensive” position and get excited about CRM at this valuation, not when it’s already quite large with a market cap of about $20 billion. Still, just because I get sweaty when I start looking at the numbers doesn’t mean it’s a bad pick — that’s up to you, of course, it being your money.

So what’s the second “Cloud Computing 2.0” stock? Some clues:

“Unlike any other company in this niche of cloud computing, this one guarantees that its clients’ cloud computing applications (think Facebook or YouTube) won’t go down for any reason — making it the most trusted company in the industry.

“… now boasting more than 88,000 customers in its latest quarterly report.

“Thanks to a new ultra-efficient business model, new revenue grew 23% year over year and earnings leaped 33%.

“As I mentioned earlier, this company has already gone up some 181% since it was recommended in Rule Breakers — and I imagine you’re beginning to understand why.

“But don’t worry… as with all the companies I’ve told you about today, David Gardner and his team are convinced that this one is just getting started and that the big money is yet to be made.”

So we toss that into the ol’ Thinkolator — and quick as a bunny, we get our answer: Rackspace (RAX)

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Yes, they do guarantee 100% uptime for their network (Rackspace has been primarily a managed hosting provider, though they’re rolling out what seem like higher-touch “cloud” services on top of that — and from what I read, the 88,000 customers is the number for the cloud division). I don’t know if a 100% guarantee is typical, I think my hosting provider guarantees 99% uptime but I’m not positive.

With all the cloud computing-connected stocks getting rumored as takeover targets after the bidding war for 3PAR a while back, it should come as no surprise that the rapidly growing and still quite small (market cap about $4 billion) Rackspace is also expensive as heck — the trailing PE for RAX is about 100, and the forward PE is 60 … which looks affordable compared to CRM, but pretty pricey compared to almost anyone else. Analysts expect them to grow roughly as fast as CRM over the next several years, in the low-20% range, so that’s nice growth but with that high valuation it still means you’re paying a price/earnings/growth (PEG) number of almost 4 for these shares.

I can’t say that I know a lot about either of these companies, so it may well be that you can make a strong case for that premium valuation for these or any of the other cloud computing companies, especially given the scalable nature of the business and the possibility for continued high (or growing) margins. I still like Akamai more than most of these, though not as much as Google (which I own), but even with Akamai I noted for the Irregulars a few months ago that there was plenty of reason to take profits as it neared $50… and if it’s any indication of my thinking about growth stock valuations, I wrote about cloud computing plays for the Irregulars last month but focused on the high-dividend REIT plays in the space (though as I said, I may be a bit of a fuddy duddy these days).

But it’s not my money you’re trying to manage — it’s yours. What do you think about the Fool’s new Kings of Cloud Computing? Is version 2.0 better than the original? Would you like to wake up on Christmas morning (for the Xmas’ers among you) with a bit of Google, Akamai, VMWare, Salesforce.com or Rackspace under your tree, or are you hoping for something a little different? Let us know with a comment below.

And we have far fewer reviews of the Rule Breakers service than we do for most Motley Fool newsletters, so if you’ve ever subscribed please take a moment to share — good experience or bad? We want to know, just click here to review the Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers for your fellow investors today. Thanks!

Full disclosure: As noted above, I own shares of Google. I do not currently own any other stock mentioned above and will not trade in any stock covered in this article for at least three days.

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Daniel Victor
Irregular
Daniel Victor
December 13, 2010 5:22 pm

Sorry,but,IMHO,these are blue sky plays !

wes rude
December 13, 2010 5:42 pm

Here is an interesting penny stock in cloud computing storage http://www.iceweb.com

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Doug
Guest
Doug
December 13, 2010 11:40 pm

I have worked in IT for over 25 years and have seen some crazy stuff like the .com bubble that never did make any sense to me and the Y2k panic that was just laughable. I am glad to say that I have made quite a bit of money on technology investments too – – once I learned to not get emotional about my investments.

My technology portfolio has more than doubled in the last two years consisting of CTXS, VMW, FFIV, AKAM, MIPS, and BIDU. Well, it has actually more than double this year. Check these companies out and see for yourself. I only invest in what I understand, and I understand the business that these companies are in. All of these companies have closely related businesses except for BIDU. I found BIDU to be a no-brainer compared to Google. I missed the initial big run of Google so I have never owned it. I always regretted not buying Google early on until a competitor was born in China. There was no way in hell that the communists were going to allow Google to work in China the way it does in the USA. The Chinese government wants to monitor/control everything their people see and do and Baidu helps them do that. Paying about $9 per share for BIDU was just too easy.

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Joe Mc
Guest
Joe Mc
December 28, 2011 2:06 am
Reply to  Doug

Doug,
What are your thoughts on Yahoo! or a similar company to Baidu? You’ve done quite
well – congrats!

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Doug
Guest
Doug
December 13, 2010 11:42 pm

(Continued because of message length constraints)

While the valuations of these stocks (CTXS, VMW, FFIV, AKAM, MIPS, and BIDU) are high according to most standards, these companies are in a race for market share. Whether it be computing virtualization or Internet searching, all of these companies are fighting to be the next Google in their own market. Companies like Oracle are not so large because they had much better products than their competitors. Oracle is a dominant software player because they gained more customers than their competitors and outlasted them through the .com bust. Fortune 500 companies felt they could trust that Oracle would be around for another 10 years so they did business with them.
r text right here!

Alan
Guest
Alan
December 14, 2010 10:02 am

What ever happened to the touted cloud player INAP??

justsara
Member
justsara
December 14, 2010 2:40 pm

Who is the Israeli cloud computing company which Nabvalier is teasing?

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T. Blessinger
Guest
T. Blessinger
December 17, 2010 7:23 pm

Enter text right here!
(Correction) Buy INAP and MGIC. Thank me later.

You'll be in heaven in 2011.

Best wishes!

Mike
Guest
Mike
January 8, 2011 7:16 pm

I like RVBD and APKT more at this point. CKSW is my favorite small cap in this space.

Tim Blessinger
Guest
Tim Blessinger
January 30, 2011 7:43 pm

Do you want to make money in 2011?

Buy INAP and MGIC.

You'll be in heaven in 2011!

Best wishes.

T. Blessinger

Uzma Mirza
Guest
Uzma Mirza
September 30, 2011 6:32 pm

I am new to all this but doing my reserch and reading various newsletter and watching the market. What do you think of eMamba? For Cloud…I did not see them on your list. Or am I confusing the company’s missions? I would appreciate any advice.

I will say so far to get advice it cost money but to see your web site…thank you. I almost subsribed to Motely fool. I am subsricbed to their $39.99 deal of monthly newsletter. for a beginner it gives me an insight but I have not yet bought and sold…I am carefull spanning the trade. So any thoughts on the above stock woudl be appreciated as I like their vision.
Thanks
Constantgardner

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Alex
Guest
Alex
December 14, 2011 5:07 pm

So much for your heaven call T. Blessinger.. Losers! LOL

Alex
Guest
Alex
December 14, 2011 5:09 pm

Hey Doug, next time you are buying let me know so I can sell short ok, buddy? LOL… FFIV.. LOL!!!!!!!

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Edwin
Guest
Edwin
June 13, 2012 3:37 am

Buy Aapl for sure money !

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vegas2012
Member
vegas2012
October 30, 2012 9:38 pm

Hi guys Ed here thinking about to spend a few bucks buying some cloud comp. stocks any advice besides GOOGLE thank you in advance 10 / 30 / 2012

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rehan
Guest
January 31, 2014 8:12 am

Who is the Israeli cloud computing company which Nabvalier is teasing?

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aaronw
Guest
aaronw
February 17, 2016 1:55 pm
aaronw
Guest
aaronw
February 29, 2016 1:00 pm

yhoo.it/1TMH8SG

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