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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80251)	10/12/1999 10:58:00 AM
From: Robert Rose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Eric, I must admit to sharing William's viewpoint. Simply put, are you making money?? If so, congratulations and join the club. William is president, I am mascot, and Glenn and HJ are new initiates. <gg> If not, then I ask you, what is the point spending hours and hours discussing yhoo fundamentals??

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80251)	10/12/1999 11:02:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

When operating margins are over 30%, you don't have to look anywhere else for profitability. 30%+ is the big leagues.

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80251)	10/12/1999 2:06:00 PM
From: dbblg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Eric, Some suggestions: -Plot YHOO's revenue growth against their employee growth. Feel free to adjust for network costs, which are higher than I had expected at this time, though not sufficiently so, imo, to obscure the power of the business model. -Compare the cash invested into the business with the cash generated from operations. Think hard about how this is likely to trend in the coming years. -Ask yourself who is going to unseat YHOO at this point. DIS has a lot of money and prestige riding on GO, and so far they haven't exactly lit the world on fire. NBCi is up next, and it will be interesting to see if they have learned anything. Fundamentally, it seems to be hard for people who have spent their lives hawking content to accept that the web isn't merely a low-cost way to distribute that content. (Remember 1996? "Content is King?" Of Albania, maybe.) -Take a hard look at YHOO's overseas operations. Remember, a lot of people overseas use the web even though it involves paying an ILEC per-minute fees, or, in a lot of places, sitting in a crowded cafe, in some places sharing a 56k line with 5 other people. The speed with which things are changing will, imo, benefit companies like YHOO and AOL who don't have to reinvent the wheel. A big U.S. cash hoard will also help. By chance (I'm not in that business) I recently saw a business plan from some folks in an EU country who admitted that they need funding for a second phone line. ("We think we are losing business since our phone line is engaged when we are working for other clients.") -Imagine being a salesman for the various web properties out there. -Talk to direct marketers. Remember that going from 1/100 response rates to 2/100, or--dare to dream--3/100 means a doubling or tripling of business. That's enough to mean a lot of things which aren't worth doing in one model are in another. Obviously, this also affects the estimates of the total size of the advertising pie, etc. -Assume GST is right and the market is going to fall off a cliff. So far, the one negative for YHOO has been the willingness of people to throw money at shaky start-ups which, in a more sober environment, would have come to YHOO (or AOL) begging for shelter. -Finally, consider the relative safety of YHOO as an investment. It isn't burning cash. It isn't likely to suffer from an economic downturn, relative to most investments. (I don't think they break this out, but they probably would suffer if people stopped checking stock quotes, as I suspect they would if we had a long, grinding decline like in 1973. Just so you won't accuse me of cheerleading too much..-g-)It isn't heavily exposed to wage inflation (which I think is accelerating, which is why I like selected tech and nothing else right now). I'm not here to persuade you, or anyone else, to buy YHOO or any other stock. I don't currently own YHOO or AMZN. There's a chance YHOO's superb fundamentals are in the price; assessments like that are, ultimately, best made within the context of each individual's financial responsibilities and expectations. I do think that the suggestion that any significant portion of the capital long YHOO here is simply buying it because it reported higher eps than the analyst consensus, or because it is up a lot, is misplaced. Best of luck, Ganesh P.S. My fav. analyst on the internet stocks is Scott Reamer at Cowen. I think he archives his old reports on a freely available website. (Sorry, I don't have a link.) I know you feel the sellsiders are pushing an impossibly rosy view of the web companies' future prospects. You may find it interesting to go back and look at what at least one (imo smart) analyst was calling for back in 1996/1997. Just a thought.

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80251)	10/12/1999 4:11:00 PM
From: spal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Hi Eric, I am new to the Internet group of stocks and am trying to get my arms around the large cap names. I have been following your recent postings and the discussion that you have been at the center of with respect to fundamental analysis or lack thereof. Many of the points you raise are thought provoking and indicate that I need to do some more homework. I would appreciate if you could guide me to some of the sources you use to gather your fundamental data. Also, with respect to your point on Yahoo's! revenue mix. What are your concerns, are they specific to Yahoo or are they general concerns about advertising based business models on the Internet? Thanks Sanjay Pal