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

To: Zhardem who wrote (11397)	7/22/1998 10:02:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Respond to of 164684

thanks. WSJ.com has a similar article. I got out of my Amazon puts when AMZN initially plunged from $140. I got out at $91, and haven't traded AMZN since. With the recovery in the stock price, and now with the "good earnings" err I mean "good losses", who knows, maybe AMZN goes to $175 or $200. I'm staying away from it until the price gets to wherever it's going, which is presumably up something from here, although who knows: not me. I might eventually nibble on some far-out put options, but want to stay away until the mo-mo crowd has milked some more. I imagine that we'll see some increased insider sales for the remainder of the year as locked up stock options are unlocked and available for exercise, so that should help the bears.

To: Zhardem who wrote (11397)	7/22/1998 10:06:00 PM
From: put2rich	Respond to of 164684

an excerpt of your post < Analysts said Wednesday's results are likely to drive shares of Internet plays even higher as more people see them as a good investment. "It just confirms that Internet stocks are making progress and that it's a slow process of going from more loss to less loss and ultimately profitability. That would indicate it's OK to continue to invest" in the companies, said Lawrence York, portfolio manager of the WWW Internet Fund.>> I guess these analysts get free books and amzn shares? from more loss to less loss? did they check how much they lost last year?

To: Zhardem who wrote (11397)	7/22/1998 10:37:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 164684

More stuff on the conference call: The earnings were in line with the range of expectations, even if growing at slower than previous rates. The positive spin some early reports have indicated mask what is going on in the business. The GAAP earnings which expenses supposed "intangeable values" to a greater extent, shows a much greater increase in losses. Any way you cut it, these are still losses. The company expects to continue aggressive promotion and advertising programs into the next several quarters. Amazon's plan is to grow business rapidly despite increased competition. Covey warned that Barnes & Noble and Borders have just recently opened up their more easily navigated sites and have begun aggressive advertising campaigns that are expected to impact competition with Amazon.com and make customer acquisitions cost grow this and the following quarters. Advertising and promotion expense ran slightly ahead of last quarter at over 20% of sales and is expected to rise a bit further. G & A expense which slimmed down to 2.2% last quarter is expected to rise to around 3.2% this quarter and remain near that level in the following quarters. Gross margins are expected "to decline in the remainder of 1998" according to Covey. Some of this is due to the lower margins associated with sales of music and video. Covey did not elaborate much further but I suspect some of the errosion in margins is due to the the new loss-leader book promotion program. This expectation for lower margins is consistent with general mass merchandise industry norms. One analyst commented that he saw that Amazon.com was turning into more of a traditional merchandiser rather than emphasizing their technology prowess. For instance, whereas the company had relied primarily on internally developed software systems, it has recently installed "collaborative filtering software" from Net Perceptions. This software enables detailed analysis of user preferences and site surfing habits that can then be used to create "active server pages" to push tailored web page views or sections tailored to the specific customer. This is a type of creative use of the internet that is becoming easily available to all e-commerce companies. Undoubtedly, Amazon.com will be one of the first sites to use the technology to greatest effect, but B & N and other competitors can be expected to follow shortly. The point here is that the more advanced internet e-commerce features are being developed by specialized software firms, such as Net Perceptions, FireFly, Allaire and others rather than being generated internally. To keep up with technology, no single company, not even Microsoft, can develop all e-commerce capabilities internally (MS recently purchased FireFly). The competition is already becoming less driven by the proprietary capabilities of early adopters and the barriers of competition more easily mitigated by an expenditure of money which larger competitors are capable of allocating. -------- Break to another post.