At a Glance: The Q·Score
AMZN carries a Q·Score of 8.5, labelled "Very Bullish", while META scores 7.9, labelled "Bullish". The 0.6-point gap may look narrow on a 10-point scale, but in practice it reflects meaningful differences across multiple dimensions rather than a single outlier metric. Both scores sit in the upper tier of the scale, so this is a comparison of two fundamentally strong businesses — the question is where each one leads and where it trails.
Quality — Profitability and Capital Efficiency
Quality measures how efficiently a company converts revenue into profit and how well it deploys shareholder capital. On net profit margin — the percentage of revenue that becomes net income — META leads with 29.8% versus AMZN's 17.4%. That means META keeps nearly 30 cents of every dollar it earns in revenue, a level that reflects the inherently high-margin nature of digital advertising. Return on equity (ROE — how much profit a company generates for each dollar of shareholders' equity) is essentially a dead heat: AMZN at 30.6% versus META at 29.8%. Free cash flow yield data was not provided in this dataset, so the Quality edge here rests primarily on META's substantially higher profit margin, though AMZN's ROE nudges fractionally ahead. On balance, META leads on the Quality dimension, driven by its superior margin profile.
Health — Balance Sheet and Execution
Health captures financial resilience — how comfortably a company can meet its obligations and how consistently it delivers on earnings expectations. The dataset does not include debt/equity ratios or current ratios for either company, so the clearest differentiator here is the EPS beat rate — the percentage of recent quarters in which a company's reported earnings per share exceeded analyst estimates. AMZN leads decisively, with a beat rate of 75% compared to META's 50%. A 75% beat rate signals that AMZN has consistently outpaced what analysts expected, which is a marker of both operational execution and conservative guidance management. META's 50% rate is not alarming — it means the company has met or beaten estimates in roughly half of recent quarters — but it does represent a meaningful gap in execution consistency. AMZN takes the Health dimension on the strength of that beat-rate advantage.
Growth — Revenue, Earnings, and Surprise
Growth examines how quickly a company is expanding its top line (revenue) and bottom line (earnings), along with the quality of earnings surprises. This is where the data tells its most striking story. META's 28% revenue growth is the higher of the two — a strong figure for a company of its scale — but its -13.4% earnings growth indicates that costs are rising faster than revenue, compressing profits. AMZN, by contrast, shows 19.6% revenue growth paired with an extraordinary 242.3% earnings growth, reflecting a dramatic improvement in profitability — likely driven by the continued scaling of its high-margin AWS cloud division and improved operating leverage across the business. For context, double-digit revenue growth is considered strong in both the Communication Services and Consumer Cyclical sectors; triple-digit earnings growth is exceptional by any standard. The EPS beat rate of 75% for AMZN further reinforces the quality of its growth trajectory. AMZN leads clearly on the Growth dimension, with META's top-line strength offset by its earnings contraction.
Valuation — Price Relative to Fundamentals
Valuation assesses how much investors are paying relative to a company's expected earnings and where the stock sits relative to analyst price targets. Forward P/E — the stock price divided by projected earnings per share over the next twelve months — stands at 26.3x for AMZN and 16.8x for META. In the Communication Services sector, forward P/E multiples in the high teens to low twenties are broadly considered normal for large-cap platforms; Consumer Cyclical companies with high-growth cloud businesses often command a premium. META's 16.8x forward P/E is notably modest for a company growing revenue at 28%, which may reflect the market's concern about the earnings decline. AMZN's 26.3x is higher in absolute terms but sits in a range that has historically been associated with companies demonstrating strong earnings acceleration. On analyst consensus price targets, META's implied upside is 29% from its current price of $588.77, while AMZN's implied upside is 18.6% from $272.65. The larger implied upside and lower forward multiple give META the edge on the Valuation dimension.
Sentiment — Analyst Consensus
Sentiment reflects how the professional analyst community views each stock, measured by the proportion of analysts with a positive rating and the breadth of coverage. Both companies enjoy exceptionally strong analyst support. AMZN leads on Sentiment: 95% of its 61 covering analysts carry a positive rating, compared to 89% of META's 57 covering analysts. Both figures are high by any measure — an 89% positive ratio for META is itself a strong signal — but AMZN's 95% represents near-unanimous conviction across a large analyst base. It is worth noting a mild divergence in META's data: despite a high 89% positive analyst ratio and a 29% implied upside to the consensus price target, the earnings growth figure is negative. This suggests analysts are looking through the current earnings pressure, likely anticipating that the cost cycle will normalise. AMZN takes the Sentiment dimension by a clear margin on both coverage breadth and positive-rating ratio.
What the Data Shows
AMZN finishes with the higher Q·Score — 8.5 ("Very Bullish") versus META's 7.9 ("Bullish") — a gap of 0.6 points driven primarily by AMZN's dominance on Growth (242.3% earnings growth versus -13.4%), its stronger EPS execution (75% beat rate versus 50%), and near-unanimous analyst sentiment (95% positive). META's countervailing strengths are real and visible in the data: a higher net profit margin (29.8% versus 17.4%), a lower forward P/E (16.8x versus 26.3x), and a larger implied upside to the analyst consensus price target (29% versus 18.6%), giving META the leads on Quality and Valuation. The two dimensions that most sharply separate these companies are Growth — where AMZN's earnings trajectory is in a different category — and Valuation, where META's lower multiple and higher implied upside tell a different story.
Explore the Full Comparison
The live, interactive breakdown — updated in real time — is available at quantify.biz/compare/amzn-vs-meta.