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

To: Herring who wrote (18790)	9/28/1998 3:06:00 PM
From: M. Frank Greiffenstein	Respond to of 164684

They are chatting over at AMZN... Yeah, they are discussing books on military history with James Cramer over at AMZN chat rooms. Something about small group of Portugese soldiers toppled huge civilization in Amazon basin or something.... DocStone

To: Herring who wrote (18790)	9/28/1998 8:18:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Article 14 of 200 Report on Business Book giants target Internet selling CAROLYN LEITCH 09/28/98 The Globe and Mail Metro Page B1 All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors. All rights reserved. Amazon.com Inc. is the undisputed heavyweight of Internet book selling -- grabbing both the lion's share of the market and investor interest. But analysts say several up-and-comers jousting for position in the burgeoning business of on-line bookstores have the potential to steal both market share and investing dollars. Barnes & Noble Inc., Borders Group Inc., Chapters Inc. and German publishing giant Bertelsmann AG, which plans to enter the United States, all have strategies for gaining a toehold in the market that Amazon.com pioneered from its Seattle base. Analyst Derek Brown of Volpe Brown Whelan in San Francisco estimates the on-line book market could swell to annual sales of between $2.5-billion and $3-billion (U.S.) in 2002. Amazon.com, he estimates, could command 30 to 40 per cent of that market. Largely because of such bright prospects, Amazon.com shares have bounded to a high of $147 on the Nasdaq Stock Market in July from a 52-week low of $21.12 in October of last year. On Friday, the shares closed at $109.25. Amazon.com has an advantage over rivals, Mr. Brown believes, because it pioneered the on-line book market and the company's management has executed more effectively than competitors such as New York-based Barnes & Noble, whose bread-and-butter business is selling books in traditional retail shops. Amazon.com has also locked up agreements to be the exclusive book merchant on several popular Web sites, including that of America Online Inc. of Dulles, Va. With his "neutral" rating, Mr. Brown is one of only a handful of analysts who are not enthusiastic about Amazon.com shares: The majority on Wall Street rates the stock a "buy". Shares of Barnes & Noble, the biggest U.S. book retailer and the No. 2 on-line book seller behind Amazon, have been hit along with many others in the market decline. The stock has fallen to a close of $27.44 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday from its peak for the past year of $48 in July. New York-based Prudential Securities Inc. analyst Amy Ryan rates Barnes & Noble shares a "strong buy," with a price target of between $50 and $55. Ms. Ryan said recently she is looking at the retail and on-line divisions separately. Barnes & Noble plans to spin off 20 per cent of the on-line division, known as barnesandnoble.com, in a public offering later this year. The division had about $12.5-million in sales in the second quarter, up 470 per cent from the same period last year. Ms. Ryan forecasts the on-line business will generate revenue of between $60-million and $65-million this year, and $200-million in 1999. She said the public entity could be worth as much as $800-million, about four times next year's predicted revenue, or about half of the multiple now accorded to Amazon.com. Analyst Donald Trott of Brown Brothers Harriman in New York rates Barnes & Noble "short-term neutral." He believes it has pulled back expansion of its traditional bookstores and is betting too heavily on the Internet. "People just do it to be cool," he says of on-line book buying. He prefers the approach of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Borders, which is expanding its bookstores in countries such as Singapore and Australia, and making a side bet on on-line selling, begun in May. Mr. Trott rates Border shares a "short-term buy," with a target price of between $33 and $37.50 in 1999, based on between 22 and 25 times his 1999 earnings estimate of $1.52. The shares closed at $26.09 on Friday on the NYSE. The Canadian entry into the fray is Toronto-based Chapters, which will launch its on-line bookstore this fall. Montreal-based analyst Patricia Baker of Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. has a "buy" tag on the shares, which have been clobbered by the market's misfortunes. Chapters shares, at a 52-week high of $34 (Canadian) last October, closed at $19 Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Ms. Baker said Chapters' investment in on-line will hurt profitability in the short term but deliver long-term returns. "Their competitive advantage is their knowledge of the Canadian market."