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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: UnBelievable who wrote (66496)	1/30/2001 10:15:52 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Blodget reccommends buying AOL, Yahoo, eBay NEW YORK, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A leading analyst on Tuesday recommended buying stocks such as AOL Time Warner Inc. <AOL.N>, Yahoo Inc. <YHOO.O> and Amazon.com Inc. <AMZN.O>, saying the Internet industry has passed its low point, even if it still faces one or two rough quarters. Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget, who made his name as an early Internet bull when he set a $400 target for Amazon.com stock in 1998, also recommended building positions in online auctioneer eBay Inc. <EBAY.O>, online advertiser DoubleClick Inc. <DCLK.O>, mobile Internet company Openwave Systems Inc. <OPWV.O> and Homestore.com Inc. <HOMS.O> In a research note to investors titled "Internet Not a Hallucination", Blodget said he thinks the sector has already passed its bottom. However, he cautioned that the "effects of the dot-com bubble revenue 'incest,' peer pressure, a supply and demand imbalance and complacent salespeople" will continue to disrupt growth for another one to two quarters. Internet stocks have had a tough couple of quarters as demands for profitability from Wall Street have caused many companies to cut jobs and reevaluate business models. The climate has become even more challenging for some of the companies as ad spending has declined and the economy shows signs of slowing. Advertising and e-commerce fundamentals will remain weak for at least two quarters but the weakness is already in the models and stock prices of the leading companies in the sector, Blodget said. After that, pricing power should increase and competition should decrease, he added. The online ad industry has become complacent after only having to "answer the phone" as companies rushed to advertise in recent years, he said. Now it has to cut pricing and innovate to prove the return on investment for advertisers. With more than 50 percent of the U.S. market and 80 percent of disposable income already online, Blodget said the Internet sector has to focus on opportunities abroad for new users. AMERICA ONLINE RESULTS Blodget's note came the day before AOL Time Warner's first quarterly results since the world's biggest media company was created in a $106.2 billion merger was completed earlier in January. Blodget said AOL, which has already announced job cuts, could announce major cross-marketing deals and a price increase for its flagship Internet service to coincide with the results. While AOL is insulated from the ad slowdown, Blodget cautioned that the company was not immune to it. Nevertheless, he expects the company to reach its targets of generating $40 billion of revenues in the first quarter. He added that there is some near-term upside in eBay through the first quarter, its strongest seasonally. For Internet media giant Yahoo, whose stock has fallen more than 80 percent since the beginning of 2000 amid the slowdown in advertising and shakeout in the Internet sector, Blodget said he believes the worst is over and its international efforts and dominance of the workplace market are advantages over AOL. If Yahoo makes it through the "AOL period" and adds more management, diversifies revenue and gets creative, Blodget said he thinks the stock could go back to $75 by the end of 2001. If it doesn't survive, Blodget sees Yahoo's stock falling. Shares of AOL closed off 69 cents at $54.31; shares of Yahoo closed down 3/16 at $39-11/16; shares of eBay closed up 7/8 at $53-3/16; shares of Amazon.com closed off nearly six percent, or $1-3/16, at $18-15/16 ahead of their quarterly results. Homestore.com shares closed down $1-13/16 at $30-1/16 and DoubleClick shares shares closed down 1/16 at $16-3/4. 20:26 01-30-01

To: UnBelievable who wrote (66496)	1/30/2001 10:18:18 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 122087

Amazon workers question reasons for layoffs By Scott Hillis SEATTLE, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc. <AMZN.O> on Tuesday said its drastic decision to cut 15 percent of its workforce was purely business, a move that would help the online retail giant finally reverse the flow of red ink. But some employees cried foul, questioning why a big chunk of the cuts were made in the one area of the company that was trying to unionize. On Tuesday, Seattle-based Amazon said it would ax 1,300 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce, by shutting down its Seattle customer service center and a distribution facility in Georgia, and by making other cuts across the company. Some 400 of those jobs are in the Seattle customer service center, where employees and local union arms, alarmed at what they say are low wages, now-worthless stock options and heavy workloads, have tried for months to form the company's first bargaining unit. "We believe some serious red flags are raised by the fact that the only customer service center impacted by layoffs was the one undergoing a union organization drive," Marcus Courtney, an organizer with the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, told reporters in a conference call. Courtney, who does not work at Amazon, said WashTech would work with employees to gather information about the layoffs and eventually file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, the top federal body handling labor disputes. "We are going to call for and demand an investigation as to why the most senior representatives are the ones most affected," Courtney said, without elaborating. Amazon founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, speaking to Wall Street analysts after the announcement, defended the move -- some of the most dramatic cutbacks by any dot-com yet -- as tough but necessary. "It was clearly the right business decision for us as we pursue making this into a profitable company," Bezos said. In its fourth-quarter results also released on Tuesday, Amazon announced a smaller pro forma net loss of $90.4 million as sales grew 44 percent to $972 million. It also said it hoped to post its first profit in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal year. "SLAVES TO WALL STREET" The company, which has lost money for five years, said the Seattle center was its most expensive service operation. But affected workers blasted the decision as a short-sighted one that would ultimately drag down the quality of customer service at a firm that boasts it wants to be "Earth's most customer-centric company." "They are bean counters. They are slaves to Wall Street. The long-term view just isn't there anymore," said Toni Blasio, a charge inquiry specialist in Seattle who will be laid off after more than two years with the company. Zach Works, one of 70 or so Seattle service workers who will keep their jobs, added, "I can't help but feel that my friends were sacrificed for Wall Street. Amazon eliminated one part of customer service that was asking for a voice." Executives said the decision was purely business. "The reality is that we totally respect the rights of every employee in this company and we will continue to do everything we can to make this a great place to work. The union activities in Seattle had absolutely nothing to do with the decision," Chief Financial Officer Warren Jensen told a conference call. Apart from severance packages -- as big as 12 weeks' pay and a $500 bonus for Seattle workers who stay until their very last day -- Amazon said it also set aside $2.5 million of its stock in a trust fund to be paid to laid off workers in two years. "We hope that as we do well, they will benefit along with us," Bezos said. Amazon stock has slid from a year high of $85-15/16 to $18-15/16 on Tuesday as the general outlook for dot-com companies turned sour and as investors grew increasingly impatient for it to make money. 21:09 01-30-01

To: UnBelievable who wrote (66496)	1/30/2001 10:20:07 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 122087

Amazon Talking Profit, but Numbers Aren't Encouraging By Tim Arango Staff Reporter 1/30/01 6:55 PM ET Updated from 4:18 p.m. EST. Earnings Scorecard Actual Estimated* Year-Ago ($0.25) ($0.26) ($0.55) *By First Call/Thomson Financial Amazon.com (AMZN:Nasdaq) on Tuesday set plans to slash 1,300 jobs, as it seeks to turn a profit for the first time. But the online retailer also cut deeply into its revenue-growth guidance for 2001 and offered investors assorted other bad news. Surprising no one, Amazon beat Wall Street's earnings estimate by a penny, posting a pro forma fourth-quarter loss of 25 cents a share. That's narrower than the 26-cent loss forecast by analysts surveyed by First Call/Thomson Financial and the year-ago 55-cent loss. Amazon's sales rose to $972 million, slightly above the $960 million it forecast three weeks ago but below the $1 billion analysts had expected before its Jan. 8 preannouncement. The company said it plans to be profitable on a pro forma basis by the fourth quarter of 2001; it has never before offered specific profit guidance, though it has guided on revenue growth expectations. (It is important to remember the company said it will become profitable on a pro forma basis, excluding noncash charges such as amortization of goodwill and investment gains and losses. But these excluded costs amounted to $994 million in 2000. And including those items, the company lost $545 million in the fourth quarter.) Analysts had expected Amazon to cut its 2001 revenue forecast to $3.7 billion to $3.8 billion, from the original $4 billion projection. But in its earnings press release, Amazon forecast 2001 revenue growth of 20% to 30% over 2000's $2.76 billion, meaning the company expects 2001 revenue of $3.31 billion to $3.59 billion. The company also projected first-quarter revenue of between $650 million and $700 million, well short of the $806 million consensus estimate. "To me the most important thing was that management was swift to recognize the change in growth trajectory," says Kevin Silverman, an analyst at ABN Amro. Silverman has an accumulate rating on Amazon.com, and his firm does not have a banking relationship with the company. For investors, however, the cut in growth projections is significant. "It means that the ultimate size of the company is going to be smaller than you thought," says Silverman. He has a $30 12-month price target on the stock, a target he may change in the coming days after he analyzes Tuesday's data. In another key metric for analysts, the company said its fulfillment costs -- expenses for shipping -- hit 13.5% of revenue, slightly more than the 12% to 13% analysts had hoped for. Falling fulfillment costs are viewed as a key component to Amazon's efforts to boost its profit margins and become more efficient. In a conference call with reporters, Chief Financial Officer Warren Jenson described the job cuts as "painful, but very necessary" for the company to become profitable. The company will close a distribution center in Georgia and a customer service center in Seattle. Jenson declined to say which departments would be affected at its corporate headquarters. Jenson blamed the slowing economy for the company's lagging growth, but clearly, Amazon's announcement will be viewed as another sign of the ills plaguing online retailing. Silverman downplayed much of the economy-as-scapegoat theory, instead laying the blame on bloated projections of how fast online retailing would grow. "I would say that the pundits' projections of how rapidly the channel shift would occur were overstated," he says. Amazon and online auction site eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq) are the two premier e-commerce sites. But while eBay has been consistently profitable, Amazon has run steep losses. And though many analysts remain optimistic that the company's large war chest -- about $1.1 billion in cash at the end of the fourth quarter -- is enough for the company to become profitable without having to tap the capital markets for more cash, the debate about Amazon's prospects has pummeled the stock in recent months, driving it into the teens from the $80 range over the last year. The stock dropped $1.06 Tuesday to close at $19.06 and was off an added 93 cents after hours on Island.