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

To: tekgk who wrote (4956)	6/3/1998 9:04:00 AM
From: Candle stick	Respond to of 164684

YET ANOTHER FORBES ARTICLE ...page 296 June 15th issue...entitled "Santayana got it wrong", by Martin Sosnoff. An excerpt: " Greenspan is worried about the inflationary implications of the wealth effect, but the country doesn't want to hear it. How else can you explain internet stocks? The combined value of America Online, Yahoo!,Excite and Amazon.com puts them near the top 50 market capitalizations in the S&P. For these stocks there are no meaningful earnings visible until the millenium, if then, but that bothers only those of us who have been here before." Good reading.....;^)

To: tekgk who wrote (4956)	6/3/1998 9:45:00 AM
From: Candle stick	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Big article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that questions the accounting practices of AOL....maybe someone will finally take notice of the "creative accounting" that these internet companies are getting away with....I remember 1 1/2 years ago when Business Week magazine ran an article about the accounting practices of Boston Chicken (BOST)....the stock was 40 and that was the end for them, recently it hit 1 /2 dollars .....AMZN accounting is suspect as well, as has been pointed out here by several accountants.............;^)

To: tekgk who wrote (4956)	6/3/1998 10:16:00 AM
From: Investor2	Respond to of 164684

Re: "The only argument left is that the brand name is worth 2 billion." Now, that's what I call "good will!" Best wishes, I2

To: tekgk who wrote (4956)	6/3/1998 11:44:00 AM
From: Alomex	Respond to of 164684

Actually, seriously, I have been involved in putting up several large web sites and my estimate is that the AMZN web site software, hardware etc. can be replicated for under 2 million easily. I've also been involved in web site development, and my estimates are much higher. We are talking 7x24 here while serving tens of thousands of customers a day. Plus content, i.e. book reviews, pictures of the cover, author interviews, and so on. Just up front, I'd buy ten ultra-sparc, top of the line Sun Servers. That alone puts us back half a million. Then you have to hire a team of ten programmers for half a year to get all the database and html software generation up to snuff. That is another half a million dollars. Then you must provide the content, hire copy writers, scan the covers, get the authors to write reviews. Say, twenty people fulltime for a year. Two million dollars. Add three system operators (one for each shift) and three web-masters with underlings, so there's another million and a half. Lastly you want to keep a changing face, so people keep on coming back, that is two developers and four copy-writers full time, another half a million per year. I'm already up to five million dollars, easily. If I was to bid in this contract, I'd say at least $5 million to equal them, but since a competitor would like to better them, I'd realistically budget $20 million. Now, add advertisements, TV and magazine adds, distribution network, special deals to bring business your way, warehouses and so on and we are talking about spending $500-800 million to create a better-than-Amazon.com company. Any takers?