4 ms·

Not until their P/E first returns a positive number.

• imh 11y ago
  Does that make twitter, amazon, and tesla still startups? I swear I'm not cherrypicking data. Those, plus google and facebook, are the first big companies I thought to look up P/E on. Public startup seems like a contradiction. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio I agree company size is a bad metric, but there's something weird about calling some of these huge companies with thousands of employees startups (the unicorns, I mean, not amazon and twitter).
  • jkestner 11y ago
    Was tongue-in-cheek, but that's why I used the word "first". All three have turned a quarterly profit at some point (Twitter only if you discount losses from stock-based compensation). Twitter and Tesla have not yet turned on the money spigot, so you could argue they're still startups. Amazon is a grown-ass business that can turn the spigot on anytime it wants to impress investors.
    • imh 11y ago
      Ah, I couldn't tell how you meant it. Poe's law and all that.