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

To: llamaphlegm who wrote (32729)	1/5/1999 7:53:00 PM
From: Tom D	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

re: annualizing Q4 revenues. That may not be as unfair as one might think. Given that overall internet sales are still in their exponential phase. AMZN probably will sell $1B in '99. But that would be a much lower growth rate than in the past. Even going from $155M to $250M (Q3 to Q4) is not so impressive, given the holiday effect that is embedded in Q4 sales. And considering the expanding number of product lines. Last year, going from Q4'97 to Q1'98 was a truly impressive display of percentage growth. The same comparison in 1999 will be a good measure of the future of this company. But, there is always the unforseen. Maybe AMZN will start getting a lot of advertising revenues, or sales referral kickbacks. I sold another chunk of stock later in the day today, at $125 7/8. But I am keeping a fourth of my original investment. BTW, a few weeks I got my copy of Michael Porter's book that you recommended. Haven't really had a chance to go through it in the way you suggested, yet. But it is in my pile of books to read. You have influenced me in positive ways. As they say, you can't go broke taking profits. And, buy using a sophisticated investment strategy called buyearlyinternetdumbluck, I have obscene profits in this stock. Best Regards, Tom

To: llamaphlegm who wrote (32729)	1/5/1999 8:45:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

During that time, it said it logged one million new customers, and shipped more than 7.5 million items. LP, There is so much that AMZN does that is misleading I do not know where to begin. A million new customers is nice but how many prior customers never returned? They continue to add customers but never decrease the number when a customer becomes inactive for a certain period of time. Someday they will have more customers than the number of people on earth which is impossible. Higher expenses incurred on fulfillment -- the process of getting ordered products into the hands of customers -- also hampered its ability to move toward profitability. .... I have dwelled on this forever. Fulfillment is a variable expense and economy of scale will not help in any way. The Seattle company, considered a bellwether in Internet retailing, blamed the lack of improvement at the bottom line on aggressive price cutting and the large role that music and video sales played in the quarter's overall sales tally. Those products offer slim profit margins. A missing very important fact. The 4th quarter sales were about $250 million. How many dollars of this was books? They only sold books last year so what percentage was the increase in book sales particularly in light of more online competition in the book business? Glenn