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

To: Dixie7777 who wrote (28800)	12/6/1998 12:11:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Article 4 of 200 Techno File/Infotech/Hype Net Stocks and the Countries They Can Buy Amy Kover 12/21/98 Fortune Magazine Time Inc. Page 212 (Copyright 1998) When Amazon .com announced in mid-November that it would sell videos online, its stock soared 22 1/4 points, and its market cap rose by $1.2 billion. That and a three-for-one stock split gave Amazon , with a value of $9.4 billion, the ability to buy the entire gross domestic product of Iceland--and 12 Boeing 747 planes to travel there. At least Amazon makes its living from something respectable, like bookselling. The goofy Internet auction business eBay, which gets 8% of its revenue from traders swapping used Beanie Babies, claims a market capitalization of $5.9 billion. That's almost three times the size of U.S. Steel. Wall Street traders are hard pressed to explain why secondhand junk is worth more than steel. That may be because this mania simply defies rational analysis. The Dow's late-summer drop seemed a reality check, but now valuations are more ridiculous than ever. In their fervor for Internet-related anything, investors have transformed companies without profits--not to mention products--into some of the most stock-rich businesses around. Need more proof? The Goldman Sachs Internet index, which tracks 11 Net-related stocks, has a market cap of $60.3 billion. And it goes on. Theglobe.com, nothing more than a Web hangout for surfers, just went public in November. Since the IPO its stock, which trades at $45, is up 406%, and theglobe--worth $446 million--could buy Singer, the old sewing-machine company, nearly two times over. Geocities, a Web page hosting service, increased revenues by 57% last quarter (no profits yet). Now it's got a market cap of $1.23 billion, larger than three TWAs. The granddaddy of them all? That's Yahoo, with a whopping $18.8 billion worth of stock value. It's bigger than Luxembourg. These zany valuations probably won't last. "The scarcity of shares makes these stocks very volatile," explains Ryan Jacob, who manages the $10 million Internet Fund. "I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of a breather." --Amy Kover COLOR PHOTO: H. BROOKS WALKER--NATL. GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION Amazon could buy the GDP of Iceland--and house its millions of books. {Icelandic landscape}