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

To: Slumdog who wrote (44316)	3/6/1999 10:04:00 PM
From: Frost Byte	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 164684

A few points to consider: 1) AMZN's books business is profitable 2) AMZN, if they wanted to, could be profitable.....all they would need to do is reduce their SG&A expenses. 3) AMZN is not just a retailer of books, cds, videos....they are attempting to be THE WALMART of the web...THE retailer on the web......They have just added drugs/consumer products and that is just the beginning. 4) A report came out on Bloomberg this weekend stating that e-commerce is expected to be $900 billion in 2003, up from $40 billion this year. 5) The management team at AMZN is brilliant, they are backed by John Doerr/Kleiner Perkins, and are working their butts off. 6) Look for Amazon insurance, financial services, travel, greeting cards, and anything that could possibly be sold on the Internet....look for these announcements this year. 7) Merrill Lynch is about to initiate coverage on Amazon...Henry Blodget, the guy with the $400 Amazon price target, has just joined Merrill - keep in mind, Merrill has 13,000 brokers. 8) Something else you need to consider: Amazon generated $600mm in sales, which cost them $36 million in capital expenditures since inception. For Barnes and Noble to generate that amount of annual sales, they would need to spend $400 million in capital expenditures (building out of superstores)...this is extremely powerful, and people just don't get it. 9) AMZN is cash flow positive. 10) 1999 for AMZN is like 1995/1996 for AOL...when AOL said screw Wall Street, we are building this business for the long-term...remember how much negative press they got for sending everyone disks for free access? AMZN is running their business for long-term shareholder value...... 11) AMZN will be a $200 billion company. -Frost Byte

To: Slumdog who wrote (44316)	3/7/1999 9:45:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

After reading yours and other posts on this thread , the view that Amazon will never turn a profit is becoming more logical and compelling than ever. IMO the tide might be on it's way out. I also read some posts on the YHOO thread discussing the "50 million" registered users. Considering an approx. 35 billion mkt. cap. this translates to over $700 per user. There are plans apparently, to begin to charge for certain info supplied by Yahoo that is presently free. Isn't one of the reasons they have so many eyeballs is that it is a free site? D, The number are worse than they even appear both for AMZN and YHOO. The 50 million registered users of YHOO may never return and that will bring the value per user even higher based on the market cap. AMZN's 6.6 cumulative customers may have made a purchase once and may never return. My wife was one of many. There is a cost to obtain a customer that the analysts use for AMZN and then the analysts pick some value of that customer through their spending over the next five years. There are two problems with this argument. One is the customer may never return and AMZN is spending money now to obtain some business from these dormant users. Secondly, the analysts use gross revenue per customer as their worth to AMZN and compare it to the cost of acquiring the customer. The net profit per customer over the expected life of the customer should be compared to the cost of acquiring and we know the net proift per customer is negative. Finally, there should be a loss of some percentage of customers via attrition. The analysts never look at the negatives. Glenn