Extrapolate Amazon's retail business out to the size of Walmart, $500 billion. Assume extreme retail margins: 5% net income margins. $25 billion in profit, at max size, under the best case scenario Amazon will ever see. More likely, Amazon will never reach the retail size of Walmart today (inflation adjusted).
A more likely number: maybe $12 to $15 billion in retail profit. Slap an optimistic valuation for the retail sector onto that: $240 to $300 billion valuation. Comparable to Walmart.
Next, AWS at $60 to $80 billion in eventual sales, with 20%-25% margins, spitting off perhaps $15b-$20b in operating income. That business might end up worth $300b to $500b.
All of Amazon's best case scenario growth for the next ten years, is already priced into the stock. That's what you would typically expect with a ~250 PE though.
Cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, drones, ai, smart home tech, developer community, etc. Are all things Amazon has a leg in that Walmart has literally nothing.
Amazon has had an amazing stock run-up in the last 2-3 years, but stock is 6-7X overpriced compared too any of their peers.
Also, Bezos is too smart for his own good, and has no succession plan.
> One Wall Street analyst believes Amazon is still in the "early stages" in many of its key markets.
With as many things as Amazon has its fingers into, it seems to me to have the potential to end up more profitably than Apple.