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

To: Gary Korn who wrote (3825)	5/2/1998 11:34:00 AM
From: Candle stick	Respond to of 164684

Gary, thanks for excerpts from Barron's. I took the liberty of copying your post to the Motley Fool pages, since you summed it up so nicely. Hope you don't mind...........;^)

To: Gary Korn who wrote (3825)	5/2/1998 1:40:00 PM
From: Norman Klein	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Isn't CDNow a better short than Amazon?? Granted all of the prices for the Internet stocks are ridiculously overpriced and Amazon is the bellwether stock, but CDNow's story is just that much more compellingly ridiculous. I agree with everyone's opinion about shorting Amazon, but there are also much riper targets available. Remember $30 going to nothing is the same as $90 going there too. Although it might be easier to obtain shares of Amazon to sell short from your broker. I have been having trouble getting CDNow shares to short. CDNow has all the competition of other Internet record stores, plus real record stores (Tower), plus all the bookstores, plus Amazon.com itself. I see them as being at the bottom of this whole Internet hierarchy, so when it collapses it will occur there first. Also the whole idea of buying CDs over the net is a bit flawed. Amazon has a steady customer base from people like me working on computer projects and needing a technical book. Because of the demands of the project, I simply don't have time to hunt down the book, so purchasing the book over the Internet makes sense (same goes for hardware and software). But this doesn't apply to music CDs, I am only interested in price and typically only buy used CDs because they are much cheaper ($8 vs $13). The following is from the CDNow Q1 finanicial report: Revenue for the first quarter ended March 31, 1998 was $10.0 million, representing a 288% increase from $2.6 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 1997. On a quarter to quarter basis, revenues in the first quarter of 1998 increased by 26.4% over revenues of $7.9 million for the fourth quarter of 1997. Operating expenses increased to $10.7 million for the quarter ended March 31, 1998 from $1.1 million in the prior year quarter and $7.6 million in the fourth quarter of 1997. The Company's net loss for the first quarter of 1998 was $9.2 million, or $0.78 per share, compared to a net loss of $544,000, or $0.07 per share, for the prior year quarter. The Company had a net loss for the fourth quarter of 1997 of $6.6 million, or $0.90 per share. So their net loss is almost equal to their revenue total. In other words, they would have done just as well to simply give their product away.

To: Gary Korn who wrote (3825)	5/3/1998 9:44:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Glenn will appreciate the following quote from the first article: "But some of the investors we spoke with weren't buying it. Retailers, in general, have not fared well in the junk-bond market. There are very low barriers to entry and competition is fierce. Barriers are even lower for Internet retailers, which don't need to carry inventory or rent space to set up shop. And Internet shoppers can browse the competition by just clicking a button. No car needed" Gary, This is so true. Competition comes and goes yearly in my markets. These are not just net competition but brick and mortor that feel they can turn profits. Glenn

To: Gary Korn who wrote (3825)	5/3/1998 10:16:00 PM
From: J.S.	Respond to of 164684

Gary, Thanks for the quotes. I think this shows the hypocracy of wall street analysts: <"While H&Q officially has buy recommendations on a host of mainstream Internet plays -- Amazon.com, Yahoo, Lycos, America Online -- [Bruce] Lupatkin [the director of research at H&Q] ADVISES AGAINST BUYING THEM AT CURRENT PRICES. "I'd tell people to wait," he says. "They're not cheap. Patience is a virtue; you don't need to own them right here,right now."s a virtue; you don't need to own them right here, right now."> "We have a strong buy out only we don't to recommend buying"!