2-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Vistaprint?

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 165,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, business card and calendar specialist Vistaprint (Nasdaq: VPRT) has received a distressing two-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Vistaprint's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Vistaprint facts

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 21% of the 308 members who have rated Vistaprint believe the stock will underperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bears include stockfreak1 and All-Star luvb2b.

Just last week, stockfreak1 touched on the headwinds working against Vistaprint: "When small businesses are struggling to survive and glancing at the number of commercial real estate defaults, it's not surprising that this company is losing its base. Trading at 5-8x earnings in this environment is far more realistic."

After announcing that its fiscal first-quarter and full-year profit would come in well below analyst estimates, Vistaprint's shares suffered a horrifying one-day loss of 36% last Thursday. They have only recovered slightly since. While unfavorable currency exchange was blamed for the poor near-term outlook, increasing competition -- from big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Staples, to online printing services Kodak Gallery and Snapfish, to Internet giants Google (Picasa) and Yahoo! (Flickr) -- should pressure Vistaprint's operating margins over the long run.

And if that wasn't enough, CAPS All-Star luvb2b offered yet another reason why Vistaprint's impressive profitability may never be the same:

The biggest is that the company was jamming subscription membership programs down the throats of unsuspecting customers. You can Google VistaPrint complaints and you'll get the idea real fast. The company decided to discontinue this practice last fall. It turns out that scamming money for subscriptions has a very high gross margin. ... Those subscriptions basically goosed the revenue and margin figures over the last year or two, so historical comparisons are not really relevant. ... The true future earnings power of this company is less than $2 per share on a GAAP basis, and frankly I'm not even sure it will do anything close to that because of the margin pressures they will face. At $35 the market is valuing the stock around 2x projected sales and 20x forward EPS when they are running single digit net profit margins and flat to declining revenues. ... There are much better quality technology companies available at these valuations today.

We should note here that a whole bunch of Fools have a far more positive opinion of Vistaprint -- including Andy Louis-Charles, who made it his pick for our "11 O'Clock Stock" series. 

What do you think about Vistaprint, or any other stock for that matter? If you want to retire rich, you need to protect your portfolio from any undue risk. Staying away from dangerous stocks is crucial to securing your financial future, and on Motley Fool CAPS, thousands of investors are working every day to flag them. CAPS is 100% free, so get started!