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

To: Jan Crawley who wrote (12324)	8/2/1998 6:41:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

* This service rates AMZN last amongst CDNow, N2K, CDWorld and CDUniverse in ease and quality of music sales--report updated today, July 2. Copyright c 1998 Charter Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Updated 02-Jul-98 briefing.com Buying CDs On The Internet "With this in mind, we decided to go buy some CDs. And see who does it best and easiest. For each CD, we looked for the following: Price Availability Music Clips Reviews We also looked at how well the navigation systems took us to the right CD, and how easy it was to "checkout," including whether you were informed of the running total or not. * The Results? A private company, CDUniverse, won our comparison test as the best place to buy CDs. The most widely known name, Amazon.com, had the worst system for buying CDs. What does this mean for investors? We are well aware that the best product does not always win in the marketplace. Good distribution of an inferior product usually beats poor distribution of a better product. But it's so easy on the Internet to switch suppliers, if you can just find out about them. 3. AMZN has a Coca-Cola-like Brand Name * AMZN bull argument: "I just want a Coke." Not caring if it costs 25 cents more. "Campbell's tomato soup." Not caring if it costs 50 cents more. AMZN bear reply: Do you really care if your Campbell's Tomato Soup comes from Albertsons or Ralphs? Probably not. Similarly, I would contend that most people don't care whether their latest Pynchon or Hawking or Gould or King comes from the hottest site on the internet or the newstand in an airport terminal. The "brand" in this case is the author; the publisher and retailer are incidental middlemen. * Customer acquisition costs rise despite brand name. * investor.msn.com Jubak's Journal Counting those Internet chickens Confounded by Yahoo!, Amazon.com and Excite? Here's a way to analyze which high fliers are in trouble and who's really out front. By Jim Jubak For example, Amazon reported that customer accounts rose in the company's second quarter to 3.1 million, an increase of 880,000. That's impressive growth, but any company can grow fast simply by throwing money at a market. Spend enough on advertising and marketing and promotion and anybody selling anything can add another customer. Of course, that only works until the money runs out. What we want to know as investors is how Amazon is doing at creating lasting value -- a brand name. If the company is succeeding, it may be spending more in actual aggregate dollars to grow its customer base, but the cost of acquiring each new customer should be falling. A brand name brings in customers through word of mouth. That's free growth and drives the average cost of acquiring a customer down. Indeed, Amazon did spend more on advertising and marketing in this most recent quarter than it did last quarter or in the second quarter of 1997. Marketing and sales expenses rose to $26.5 million, compared with $19.5 million in the first quarter of 1998 and just $7.8 million in the year-earlier quarter. How much growth did Amazon.com get for its marketing money? In the most recent quarter, the company was able to add 880,000 customers for its $26.5 million, for a cost of about $30.11 a customer. In the first quarter of 1998, Amazon spent $19.5 million and added 750,000 customers. That's $26 per customer. Those numbers don't show any "brand effect" at Amazon yet. In fact, I'd say the numbers show that Amazon is still building a brand with consumers. I don't find a $4-per-customer rise in marketing and sales expenses alarming, however. Amazon is facing growing competition from other online booksellers and the company is moving into new areas such as selling music CDs online, where it has to play catch up with companies that have already built some identity with consumers. In its latest report, the company warned that marketing and sales expenses would be rising in future quarters because of that increased competition. In short, Amazon's numbers are about what I'd expect from a company still building a brand name against increasing competition. of Internet companies that matters.)

To: Jan Crawley who wrote (12324)	8/2/1998 7:17:00 PM
From: umbro	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Jan said, "The insiders sold approx 70,000 shares on/before 12/97. This may gives us a clue as to the "date" of the above info. I checked the "Inside" link on Yahoo!, and looked only at "Sold" entries, not form-144, "planned sale", or "exercised" entries. I come up with 64,500 shares sold since Nov-1997. I may have missed an entry/two, but it looks to me like the data is fairly accurate and up-to-date. There are lots of 144 "planned sale" filings however. By the way, although the insiders (directors, officers) may have to wait two weeks to sell, I'm not so sure that the regular employees have to wait that long to sell their options, and by last count there were a lot of options (6 mil.?) that can be immediately exercised.

To: Jan Crawley who wrote (12324)	8/2/1998 7:58:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Here is another source that also lists the form 144s - registration of intent to sell; insidertrader.com This doesn't look like it will post right - best to go to the site and search on AMZN 144 47,800,000 382,558 4 - S,N,N,S 124.95 7/98 144 3,322,526 50,150 4 - S,N,N,N 66.25 6/98 144 3,142,822 34,454 9 - D,A,S,A,S,U,S,S,N 91.22 5/98 S 1,268,820 14,000 1 - V 5/11/98 90.63 6/98 144 1,237,787 13,891 4 - U,S,N,N 89.11 4/98 144 7,380,518 100,834 23 - V,N,N,U,N,S,S,S,U,N,S,N,U,S,S,U,U,N,N,U,N,N,N 73.19 3/98 144 29,624,778 480,293 31 - D,N,N,N,N,A,N,A,N,U,N,U,N,N,S,O,N,S,N,U,N,N,N,N,U,N 61.68 2/98 S 3,490,210 56,000 3 - D,F,V 2/24/98 - 2/03/98 62.33 3/98 S 1,995,350 35,000 2 - D,V 1/28/98 - 1/27/98 57.01 2/98 144 32,000 500 1 - S 64.00 12/97 144 47,319,996 969,527 10 - D,N,S,N,N,N,N,N,S,N 48.81 11/97 S 532,405 10,000 1 - D 11/18/97 - 11/17/97 53.24 12/97 B 720,000 40,000 1 - B 5/15/97 18.00 6/97 It looks like about 800,000 have been registered over what has been sold. There was that lone buy at 18 back in May of last year. Boy that should give the speculators all sorts of convidence that their money is wisely spent ; -).