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

To: John Chen who wrote (118559)	2/25/2001 3:45:28 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Glenn,re:"what about ... distribution centers". I thought that was paid for from the 'Free money from the capital market', it only take AMZN to sell '1million shs' at $100 to take care of a lot of things. Didn't they take care of that at the right time? <ggg> They are all leased with 10 year leases. Amazon was able to settle up with their Landlord for the Georgia center they closed with an upfront $150 million payment. That is common when exiting a lease. A Landlord will agree to a lower casg upfront stllement if the number makes sense since the Landlord is then free to re-lease the building in question. Amazon stll has 9 center remaining in the US. Assuming the cost to close is the same which I believe those would be higher due to being larger, we would bee looking at another $1.3 billion to close the leases.

To: John Chen who wrote (118559)	2/25/2001 4:27:02 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

To:Mark Fowler who wrote (12886) From: umbro Saturday, Aug 8, 1998 1:24 PM Respond to of 118564 Amazon Moves to Build E-commerce Empire But skeptics wonder if Junglee, PlanetAll buys reflect strategy or financial opportunity. By Mark Gimein and Alex Lash [ thestandard.net ] Thanks, Mark for the ref. to the article. This is a must-read for anyone trying to follow Amazon.com, and e-commerce. A few excerpts: The not-so-hidden message in Amazon.com's spate of buys is that, if everything goes according to plan, the balance of power will shift dramatically from media portals to e-stores. Don't think of Amazon.com as a bookseller. Don't even think of it as a Wal-Mart of the Web. Think of it as the department-store anchor tenant in the biggest mall on Earth. ... Why the secrecy? Well, if you were embarking on a strategy likely to alienate some of the biggest Net players, you'd probably be cagey, too. Seen in isolation, Amazon.com's latest acquisitions seem to be a peculiar fit. PlanetAll provides 1.5 million registered members with an online contact and calendar manager. Aside from an opportunity to provide gift suggestions to members who use PlanetAll for birthday reminders, the relationship to Amazon.com's retailing business is tenuous. Meanwhile, Junglee has a highly touted product- and price-comparison service that, awkwardly, often shows Amazon.com's competitors offering lower prices. While Bezos and Co. have hinted at PlanetAll's use in the Amazon.com world, it's not altogether clear if they'll use Junglee in its current form. ... Says West Shell, CEO of Web marketing company Netcentives, "It's very clear that Amazon.com is deciding it wants to be a commerce portal. . They will be competing with major retailers in key product categories. What they need now for their portal is content, building in different levels of functionality for their members to come and stay at Amazon.com." This, in turn, sets Amazon.com up for a fight with the portals. Brett Bullington, executive VP of Excite, agrees with the general perception that Amazon.com is building a commerce portal of some sort, but says he isn't worried."If [what Amazon.com is building] is a mall," says Bullington, "there will be multiple malls. It's a big universe. There will not be a single source of commercial activity. If there is, then Amazon.com is in a phenomenal situation. But I don't think that's the case." Officials at smaller portals were more wary of the new competition and noticeably less sanguine. "We'll honor our existing contract with Junglee," says Kirby Winfield, marketing director of fledgling portal Go2Net, "and we're not cutting off any options, but it's not likely we'll renew with them." The concerns of Go2Net and its bigger Web portal brethren will certainly be an issue for Amazon.com, which depends on them for some of its traffic. ... But not every observer believes that there is a thoroughly developed method in Amazon.com's acquisitions. Financial players point out that a major incentive for Bezos to go on a buying binge is simply that he can. "Amazon.com has a $5 billion market capitalization. That's a tremendously inflated currency. The rational part of me says they should go spend it while they're using discounted dollars that might be worth no more than 30 cents," says venture fund manager Alan Salzman, a partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners. "That's what I would do." Message 5446854