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

To: Tom D who wrote (1818)	2/28/1998 9:55:00 PM
From: Paul Merriwether	Respond to of 164684

This thread is sooo like aol! interactive.wsj.com An excerpt follows. On the other hand, Amazon has minuscule book value -- the stock is now selling at well over 60 times book. And it is completely unburdened by earnings and in no immediate danger (for the rest of this decade, anyway) of showing a profit. The absence of earnings obviously has certain disadvantages for any enterprise; however, it appears rather a blessing for the stocks of Internet companies, since it keeps an investor from dwelling on such unsettling things as P/E multiples, which are always astronomic for those rare on-line outfits that actually earn money. Amazon's rapid growth is, no secret, the kind of stuff that turns momentum players dewy-eyed and sends shivers down their little curved spines. And those racy types have contributed appreciably to the sharp ascent of Amazon's shares. The lack of such boring stuff as profits, along with the swift and spectacular runup in the stock, has lured droves of short sellers to their everlasting rue. As of mid-February, over three million shares were short, a fair number in view of the fact that there are fewer than 24 million shares out altogether. What happened to the short sellers of Amazon last week is too brutal to spell out in this family magazine; we'll content ourselves with the observation that it wasn't nice. But the panicky rush to cover manifestly helped push up the price of the stock. As with America Online and Yahoo!, moreover, Amazon is a favorite of the strange creatures who haunt the chattery precincts of the Web where stocks are touted. We don't mean to be too hard on those designated touting outlets; if nothing else, they keep the many spooky souls who frequent them occupied and off the streets. We find a nice irony in the on-line affection for Amazon's stock; after all, many of the people bulling it so feverishly are the very same souls who tirelessly proclaim the death of print and the new age of electronic media; yet here they are, getting all lathered up over a company that deals in ... books.