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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (118663)	2/26/2001 7:24:30 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn my friend, now let me take you back into the archives. >5/14/97 3:00 PM ET By Amy Olmstead and Avi Stieglitz Staff Reporters Despite some minor questions about when or if it will be able to turn a profit, Internet bookseller Amazon.com (AMZN:Nasdaq) is scheduled to go public on Thursday amid investor hoopla and frenzy. IPO followers are expecting the stock, which was priced at 18 by lead manager Deutsche Morgan Grenfell late Wednesday, to shoot up when it begins trading. "I think there will be a very strong premium," says Ryan Jacob, an analyst with IPO Value Monitor. Demand to get in on the offering already has prompted DMG to increase the price range twice from the original target range of 12 to 14. In addition, the size of the offering has grown from 2.5 million shares to 3 million shares. Jacob says that the strength of the Amazon.com offering can be attributed to investors' wanting to get in on the first pure play on electronic commerce. "Being early on the Internet counts a lot," he says. Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq - news), which may not have the most sophisticated technology, has become the most popular Internet search engine because it was the first, Jacob adds. Being first helps build a company's brand, an important edge on the rapidly growing Internet. Confident that Amazon.com can continue its explosive revenue growth, Jacob believes that staggering losses can turn into profits within the next couple years. "It will be difficult for some of the larger booksellers to compete with them since they don't want to cannibalize their existing retail operations," says Jacob. Manish Shah, the publisher of the IPO Maven, agrees that investors will push the stock up in the short term but is doubtful that there will be earnings any time in the near future. "This is still [being valued] on hopes and not on the earnings performance." More amazing than the $470 million value that the market is placing on a money-loser like Amazon.com is how quickly sentiment about the company's stock has changed. Only weeks ago, there was speculation that Amazon.com would have to lower the price range to attract buyers, as Newsweek's Allan Sloan, The San Francisco Chronicle's Herb Greenberg and other respected financial journalists scoffed at the offering. Meanwhile, another Internet commerce site, Auto-By-Tel, delayed its planned offering for April, and auction site On-Sale (ONSL:Nasdaq) went public without much fanfare on April 17. (Both offerings, along with Amazon.com, were previewed in a March 31 story in The Street.) Investors were not only shying away from the Internet but from IPOs in general; only 30 companies went public in April, the lowest number since January 1995. But the renewed bull market seems to have stoked investor desire for IPOs and given Amazon.com a more appealing patina. Perhaps offering a hint of what might happen tomorrow, Rambus (RMBS:Nasdaq), a company that licenses speed-enhancing technology to memory-chip makers, jumped more than 150%, from 12 to 30 1/4 in its first day of trading Wednesday. It probably also won't hurt Amazon.com's offering that its biggest competitor, Barnes & Noble (BKS:NYSE - news), seems to be scared of the Internet company. Barnes & Noble, which launched its Internet site this week, also filed what many consider to be a publicity lawsuit against Amazon.com. The suit charges that the Internet bookseller falsely claims to be the "World's Largest Bookstore."

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (118663)	2/26/2001 7:24:51 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn: I would not take Bill's comments too personally -- it takes an enormous effort to sustain a prolonged high level of denial and he is no doubt strained by this challenge. AMZN is his own personal "canary in the coal mine". Perhaps it is time to let him work this out by himself, in private.