IBD 50: Lululemon, Netflix Lead Top 5 Consumer Stocks

IBD's Capital Hill ^ | 3/7/2011 | Ed Carson

[Slyscribe]

The consumer is back. And not just for the economy. The IBD 50 list of the very best stocks is littered with consumer stocks, especially at the top. The top five — Lululemon Athletica (LULU), Priceline.com (PCLN), Netflix (NFLX), OpenTable (OPEN) and Baidu (BIDU) are fast-growing, innovative firms that are firing on all cylinders.

[RockinRight]

Too bad I didn’t buy a couple hundred shares of PCLN back in ‘06 or so...

[barbarianbabs]

NETFIX is the best. LOSE your cable and satellite and get it.

[Perdogg]

Lululemon is expense athletic clothing, much more than Underarmour or Nike. I am surprised that they are doing well in this economy.

[youngidiot]

This is queer. Last I heard Netflix has yet to make a profit.

[KarlInOhio]

Netflix is very vulnerable to attacks by those who have to carry their product. The post office has complained that flukes in the postal regulations require them to carry Netflix discs as envelopes rather than packages, even though their automated machines can't handle them, so they want to jack up Netflix's postage fees. Similarly, the cable and phone companies see Netflix as both a major competitor stealing their customers and as someone chewing up terabytes of bandwidth. The ISPs want to either screw around with them to make large internet streams less reliable or else enact transmission limits with onerous over limit fees to get people back to pay TV and pay per view movies.

Imagine Netflix's sales if you or they had to start paying a couple bucks extra postage per disc or a few dollars for the video bandwidth for each movie.

[expat_panama]

Netflix has yet to make a profit.

NFLX may have a high PE --today's price divided by last year's earnings, but all that means is that it's growing and everyone knows it.  Right now it's got steady and strong  return on assets and return on growth plus a good price/sales ratio.   Top that off with the fact that right now it's technically within buy range.

Last time I owned it I'd bot it Feb2 @ 211.26 and sold Feb21 @ 235.51.  Hmmm, you've just convinced me to buy it again this morning....

[sportutegrl]

I sunk my roth into netflix last feb at 50/share. Yeah baby.

[Moonman62]

Too bad I didn’t buy a couple hundred shares of PCLN back in ‘06 or so...

A purchase in 2005 would have yielded a 20X gain. Of course, if you'd bought the IPO back in 1999 you'd just now be getting close to breaking even.

[expat_panama]

ssssweeet!