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

To: H James Morris who wrote (34752)	1/13/1999 12:02:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

We have a bounce . . . should be good to short in here or if a rally occurs above 165. My guess is that we should see a rebound in enthusiasm among retail investors chasing the Internut group. There is a lot of money floating around that can come back into the sector. Many will look at Yahoo!s results and say that they were better than expected and good reason for renewed faith in their bullish investment strategy. The conference call was very interesting. On the surface it seemed that most everything was rosy and moving forward. Yahoo! management was buoyant as usual and obviously relished the job of telling people how great things are and how well their team had performed. Congrats rang from the lips of many of the analysts. But, the line of questioning from some of the analysts revealed growing concerns. Sales grew only 16% over last quarter. Wasn't that a slowing from previous rates and low considering how much general Internet usage was up? And what about the great e-commerce push - wasn't that supposed to add significantly to revenues? The company explained that during Christmas that people spend more time with family and other things besides the Internet. But that excuse seemed phony - wasn't the forth quarter typically one of strong growth? And aren't more people finished with vacations and back in school and at work, therefore spending more time on the Internet? Well . . . yes, it is typically a seasonally strong quarter . . . "~we will keep a tight control on our expenditures, adjusting for slower periods going forward". And what about competition? Isn't that heating up? "~We have said before that there is plenty of room for several major portal competitors and that our goal is to be among the most successful." Hmmm . . . when I take a look at Lycos and see that they have now achieved a 43% reach compared to Yahoo!s 47% (+/-5% error factor), it looks like Yahoo! has not been keeping up with the competition. And the competition is just STARTING. So what does this have to do with the Amazing one? For one, competition, even among the 'invincible' leaders, is growing and yesterday's rate of success can quickly be overtaken. But brand loyalty is surely something that Internet companies can build upon to assure future profits "somewhere in the next few years" isn't it? And why did Yahoo! shun questions that tried to get at what pricing pressures they were seeing . . "~ Most of our contracts are long-term and are not up for negotiation." Pretty smug attitude , , , it will b nice to see if they can maintain it when the Internet ad industry turns more into a buyers market. Yahoo! and Amazon are great leaders on the Internet. But business is business. The rose covered pathways to instant riches are turning wilted. Before very long they will turn more treacherous.