The market was not in love with Zipcar’s Q1 earnings, which drove the share price down 10 percent this morning. Zipcar actually did alright with 23 percent year to year subscriber growth (709,000 total subs), 22 percent revenue growth, and CEO Scott Griffith’s reassurance that the car sharing leader was on track to “deliver our first full year of US GAAP net income” in 2012.
The last year has been a bloodbath for Zipcar’s share price as it’s been more than cut in half, and with estimates that the company will turn in 12 cents a share this year in net income, it would need a very high 100X price to earning multiple to justify even its current price.
Now none of these metrics actually matter to Wall Street as long as you show aggressive growth without too much long term risk. And with everyone jumping into car sharing (most notably Hertz, which will bring a few hundred thousand cars online soon) along with good but not great growth, one can start to see how the street has lost its excitement for Zip.
Get daily updates like this and much more on GigaOM’s premium subscription research service. And here’s what else I’m reading this morning:
- Ice Energy reorganizes: Energy storage startup Ice Energy has restructured as the R&D portion of the business will be spun off.
- Solar panels cause clashes with homeowners groups: After numerous reports of homeowners associations banning solar roofing for aesthetic reasons, there’s a movement among many states to pass laws disallowing homeowners associations from being able to institute such bans.
- Why tomorrow’s iPad will need a battery breakthrough (subscription required).
- Green IT Q1: Ups and downs for EVs and the quest for a low power server (subscription required).

Comments have been disabled for this post