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

To: Charles who wrote (3530)	4/28/1998 3:47:00 AM
From: Charles	Respond to of 164684

Feature story on Tuesday's WSJ: Amazon.com Posts Smaller Loss, Higher Revenue Than Forecast By JIM CARLTON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Amazon.com Inc., powered by strong growth in on-line book sales, reported a smaller loss and higher revenue than analysts expected. The Seattle-based company also accelerated its push beyond books, announcing plans to buy three smaller companies that include Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), a source of information about movies and television which Amazon said will eventually help it sell videos on-line. Amazon said it bought the companies for a combination of cash and stock that will cause it to incur $55 million in charges against future earnings. The company also announced a 2-for-1 stock split. Amazon (www.amazon.com) said its net loss for the first period ended March 31 swelled to $9.26 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $3.04 million, or 16 cents a diluted share. That is seven cents per share better than analysts' consensus of a 47-cent loss, according to First Call Corp. Revenue rose to $87.4 million from $16 million, well above analysts' expectations of about $73 million. Amazon pioneered the sale of books on-line, and is considered a bellwether for the state of Internet commerce. The company is still far from profitable, and faces competition from bigger booksellers. But analysts continue to focus on Amazon's revenue and customer growth as a sign that many people are buying goods on-line. The company announced Monday that its customer accounts grew to 2.26 million, up 50% from the fourth period ended Dec. 31. The company reported its results after stock markets closed. Amazon's shares tumbled along with other Internet stocks in a turbulent session, trading as low as $77.125 before closing at $82.75 off $2.125 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In after-hours trading following the announcement, Amazon's shares bounced back to $85, according to Instinet Inc. Analysts said it was unclear whether Amazon's results will provide another upward boost to volatile Internet stocks. Strong quarterly results from Yahoo! Inc. and Infoseek Corp. lifted others in the sector, while good news from Excite Inc. didn't. "It's just been a frenzy," said Lise Buyer, an analyst at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. "Some of these companies have very bright futures ahead of them, but there is also no question that there is no correlation between the stock prices and the underlying fundamentals of the company." Sound Fundamentals With its proven track record of growth, Amazon is regarded by many analysts as one of the Internet companies with sound fundamentals. It has been grappling with on-line competition from Barnes & Noble Inc. (www.barnesandnoble.com) and other booksellers, however, causing it to lower prices while it spends heavily on adding distribution facilities. Amazon is exploring adding sales of musical recordings, inviting suggestions from customers on how to proceed. The company said it hopes to broaden its presence in Europe with the three acquisitions: Bookpages Ltd. (www.bookpages.uk), one of the largest booksellers in the United Kingdom; Telebook Inc. (www.telebuch.de), a major on-line book store in Germany; and Internet Movie Database, which is also based in Britain. The company said it expects to issue 540,000 shares of common stock as part of the purchase price for all three companies. Overall, Amazon officials said they were encouraged by their progress. "It took us 27 months to serve our first million customers, and less than six months to serve our second million," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's president and chief executive officer.