Roger's 1997 Short Picks Message Board

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1997 Short Picks

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next

To: Dan Ross who wrote (7602)	11/28/1997 1:03:00 PM
From: vegetarian	of 9285

My experience with AMZN has been quite the opposite. I have bought books from them on 3 occasions and will buy them again. I recommended their site to a few of my friends who used it. Their site is well organized, service is fast and efficient. Their collections is excellent. Their prices are excellent their confirmation and tracking system is very nice, I think it is a very nicely run company. I agree that it is hard to browse books as one does in Barnes and Noble but that itself is inadequate reason for AMZN to be not making revenues in the future; their discounts of close to 30% are hard to beat. It is still possible for people to get the best of both world by browsing the books in a local store and ordering it online via AMZN or Barnes and Noble on line service, only takes a few days to get the books. Barnes and Boble shop prices are only 10% discounted whereas their on line prices (which are incidently competitive with AMZN) are 30% discounted and they will not try to match online prices because they can't. Obviously, somthing has to give in the long run with this model, and I think with publishing costs soaring the stores will be forced to reduce their inventory eventually. I think both online services are excellent though IMO AMZN is way overvalued at this point compared to its earnings even few years into the future. The following observation is in order: the analyst's estimates for AMZN are such that they will not make money for a while because they probably don't see this business picking up that fast whereas investors/speculators think otherwise and have great expectations and have bid up its price to ridiculous levels. Who will be right eventually is hard to say but the very high expectations from them to execute flawlessly every Q with no earnings for a while may end up killing what otherwise could be a great business opportunity and an efficient way to buy books. I guess Ben Graham would probably suggest that the company management should attempt to tone down ridiculous price levels at this time so that they wont run into future problems (in his "security analysis" he suggests that its management's job to make sure that the right expectations are made out of them, recently Ballard management did that when their stock ran up 20-25 points in 2 days or so); do we know if AMZN management has tried any watering down?

Report TOU Violation

Share This Post

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next