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

To: Alomex who wrote (150067)	11/14/2002 12:41:11 AM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164684

Yup, the population has increased in years past. That's not going to change anytime soon. IMOP

To: Alomex who wrote (150067)	11/14/2002 5:13:50 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

I think Bill Miller of Legg Mason fame just broke even going into the XMAS rush. LM : LEGG MASON INC (NYSE) >>Each year since 2000, as it did this week, Amazon.com has marked the holiday shopping season with the chirpy-sounding Holiday Delight-O-Meter, an approximate running total of the items ordered on its retail sites worldwide. Each year, financial analysts try to dissect this number for insight into the Seattle-based online retail giant's financial picture, to no avail. Still, they analyze. At New York-based Bear Stearns, analyst Jeff Fieler recorded a "delight ratio per day" last year to track its correlation to revenue growth. He found none. "I would say we watch it very closely, but haven't necessarily figured out what it means," Fieler said. "Anyone who spent a lot of time looking at the Delight-O-Meter was disappointed with the inferences they might have made." Wit Sound View analyst Shawn Milne of San Francisco has kept a record of daily order totals since 2000, give or take a few days here and there. He can tell you, for instance, that holiday order volume peaked in early December last year and, on the best day, customers ordered 1.6 million items. Beyond that, there's not much to it. "The first year, I tried to build a sort of black box to figure out what the revenue was," Milne said. "Can't do it. The mix (of products and partners) changes too much from year to year." Consider, for a moment, the enigma: A company that closely guards its financial measurements — while an investor community hungers for any clue — decides to release surprisingly detailed information about its holiday sales. That information turns out to be, well, a running total. Not much more. Amazon itself has tried to ward off any financial inferences. The company's Delight-O-Meter press release for the past two years has carried a disclaimer that it "should not be viewed or used as a predictor or indicator of revenue or other financial information relating to Amazon.com." "We're explicit in the language as to what it does and does not cover," Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith said. Such financial-projection tools exist, by the way. Reston, Va.-based comScore Networks tracks the Internet activity of 1.5 million Internet users worldwide. It uses the information to extrapolate revenue projections for online retailers and then sells them to financial analysts. Dan Hess, comScore vice president, said the running total was 9,863,022 when he returned a reporter's call. A few seconds later, the total was 800 items higher. "The question is: Was that 800 CDs or 800 DVD players?" he said. "The implications from a revenue standpoint are obviously significant." Beyond financial extrapolations, an apples-to-apples comparison of holiday sales is difficult in and of itself. In 2000, for instance, the meter tracked sales between Nov. 2 and Dec. 23. In 2001, it was Nov. 9 through Dec. 21. This year, the company started keeping track Nov. 1. Are the different dates meant to throw analysts off track? "It's a fair question," said RBC Capital Markets analyst George Sutton. "Regardless of that, we could try to adjust the (totals) ourselves. I give them credit for providing this." Bear Stearns' Fieler said he'll maintain a watchful eye, at the very least to track the orders that flow through the site. "You know how analysts are," Fieler said, "if it's there, they have to analyze it." << seattletimes.nwsource.com