Topic: How To Invest

Q: Pat, can I have your opinion of Stamps.com? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

A: Stamps.com Inc., $282.62, symbol STMP on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 17.1 million; Market cap: $4.8 billion; www.stamps.com), offers online postage and shipping solutions under several brand names: Stamps.com, Endicia, ShipStation, ShippingEasy, ShipWorks, and MetaPack. The company lets users print official USPS stamps and shipping labels for a monthly subscription fee. Its shipping platform and software also let customers print mailing and shipping labels for multiple carriers around the world. Those customers are mainly small and medium-size businesses, home offices, and e-commerce merchants. To diversify its product offerings and increase market share, the company has made several acquisitions over the past five years: It bought Endicia, an Internet postage company, in 2015 for $215 million; the rights to Shipping Easy, a web-based, multi-carrier shipping software, for $55 million in 2016; and in 2018, it paid $218 million for MetaPack, a global delivery management system that integrates over 400 carriers and 5,500 delivery services. Due mainly to these purchases, Stamps.com’s revenue shot up 174.3%, from $214.0…