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

To: Robert Leverton who wrote (36894)	1/26/1999 6:57:00 PM
From: Raiders	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

What is the Price you are seeing? raiders

To: Robert Leverton who wrote (36894)	1/26/1999 9:05:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 164684

I have some difficulty figuring out how the market will react to the Amazon results and presentation. On the one hand posting 230% sales growth looks very impressive - not many businesses can grow that fast. And then they showed a marked improvement in reducing the cost per acquisition and in margin of loss. And then they have said that the .com book business turned profitable - but that could be by a fraction of a cent. Very impressive growth by comparison to other sectors of the economy. However, that mostly fell short of my expectations and the "wisper numbers" for sales that were talked about a few weeks ago. One thing I have a difficult time understanding is the idea that Amazon is "gaining market share". Hmmm . . . gaining market share compared to whom? Several analysts have reported that the gulf between the "leaders" in etail and others has widened over the past couple of quarters. That certainly looks to be the case if you compare the market share of the top 10 players. But wait a minute - didn't we just find that on-line retail sales have grown over 5 times over last year to $8.2 billion? And didn't Bezos say in mid November that sales were booming by 4-5X? Something doesn't make sense - Amazon is gaining market share against some of the leaders but is losing ground compared to overall market growth. This would indicate that the competition is broadening significantly and the "leaders" have a smaller share of it. It would be unfair to draw conclusions about how this trend will mature, but then it is just as unfair to draw consclusions that this is only a momentary shift. Could it be that the Internet is not a broadcast industry dominated by a few players? Could it be that the open access of the internet is also leading to multiple purchasing opportunities and a spreading out of business rather than a concentration of it (a broadcasting out of access)? Who knows? This stock is highly speculative at this point but the mania may go either way depending on the mass hysteria and expectations.