Top 5 Large-Cap Stocks for March 25

Each business day, TheStreet.com Ratings TheStreet.com Ratings compiles a list of the top five stocks in one of five categories -- fast-growth, all-around value, large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap -- based on data from the close of the previous trading session. Today, large-cap stocks are in the spotlight.

These are stocks of companies with market capitalizations of over $10 billion that rank near the top of all stocks rated by our proprietary quantitative model, which looks at more than 62 factors. In addition, the stocks must be followed by at least one financial analyst who posts estimates on the Institutional Brokers' Estimate System. The stocks are ordered by their potential to appreciate.

Note that no provision is made for off-balance-sheet assets such as unrealized appreciation/depreciation of investments, market value of real estate or contingent liabilities that might affect book value. This could be material for some companies with large underfunded pension plans.

Amazon.com(AMZN) is an online retailer that operates various retail websites, including amazon.com, shopbop.com and endless.com. We upgraded this stock to a buy in February 2009 because of the company's impressive top-line growth across geographies, higher earnings and healthy cash balances.

For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, Amazon's revenue increased 18.2% year over year, boosted by higher sales from the North American and International segments. Net income also improved, rising 8.7% from $207 million to $225 million. Earnings per share rose in turn, climbing from 48 cents to 52 cents per share. Cash and cash equivalents jumped 19.8%, while total debt for the quarter dropped 52.1%. Stockholder equity more than doubled to $2.67 billion. As a result, the debt-to-equity ratio improved to 0.3 from 1.2 in the prior year's quarter.