Amazon and burning cash - From Briefing.
Trivia question: Which Internet company burned through the most cash in the latest quarter? Not on a per share basis, but actual dollars... With a Q2 loss of $138 mln for the qtr ended June 30, Amazon.com (AMZN) bled more money than the next five companies on the list combined. Next question: Which was the most profitable of the Internet pure-plays? At least a few of you probably guessed Yahoo! (YHOO). But a closer look at the company's quarterly report reveals that the leading Internet portal actually reported a net loss of $15 mln for latest qtr and a loss from operations of $25 mln. If we were to exclude charges, which Internet companies are so fond of doing, Yahoo! turned a profit of $28 mln or $0.11 a share. But even if we were to look past acquisition and amortization costs, Yahoo! would still come up short of the top spot. Including charges, America Online (AOL) posted a quarterly profit of $160 mln or $0.13 a share... After searching through more than 50 earnings releases, these are the companies that Briefing.com uncovered as having the highest burn rates.
Burning Cash
Stock Net Loss Sales & Marketing Costs Loss Per Share Shares Outstanding
Amazon.com (AMZN) $138 mln $86 mln $0.86 161 mln
USinternetworking (USIX) $23.6 mln $13.6 mln (SG&A) $0.66 n/a
Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch (TMCS) $23 mln $9.4 mln $0.31 73 mln
barnesandnoble.com (BNBN) $22 mln $23 mln $0.17 126 mln
StarMedia Network (STRM) $22 mln $13 mln $0.77 31 mln
eToys (ETYS) $21 mln $11.5 mln $0.21 98 mln
The fact that many of these companies reported relatively small per share losses, yet had huge dollar losses, illustrates the masking effect of dilution. For instance, although StarMedia Network's quarterly loss of $0.77 a share would appear to be more than 4 times larger than the $0.17 loss reported by barnesandnoble.com, the companies actually lost the same amount on a dollar basis. Of course, when (if) the companies reach profitability, the disparity in outstanding shares will have the opposite effect. For example, net income of $10 mln will translate to earnings of $0.32 a share for StarMedia, versus a profit of just $0.08 a share for barnesandnoble.com. - DS |
