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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (52252)	3/16/1999 9:41:00 PM
From: Stefan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike who in their right mind would give AMZN more money? What the hell is going on, has the financial community gone mad? Online retailer Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) plans to increase its number of authorized common shares to 1.5 billion from 300 million to finance acquisitions and corporate operations and to fend off hostile takeovers. This is 1.2 billions * $140 = $168 billions. Who they think they are. Is every one blind? Where are the regulators? Do they know what all this leads to? This is just insane. Be happy don't worry..... I'm buying on of these cabins in the woods.<G>

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (52252)	3/17/1999 8:40:00 AM
From: Eggolas Moria	Respond to of 132070

The unexpectedly strong performance of the economy so far this year has pushed the earnings forecasts of many strategists higher. For example, Bruce Steinberg, the chief economist at Merrill Lynch, turned his earnings growth prediction on its head, flipping to an increase of 3.5 percent from a decline of 5 percent. But his colleague, Richard Bernstein, the director of quantitative research at Merrill Lynch, has a different view. Unlike Steinberg, he says the direction of earnings is down, not up. As he put it in a recent report, "We do not have one indicator that suggests that the profit cycle will accelerate." nytimes.com

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (52252)	3/17/1999 8:46:00 AM
From: Eggolas Moria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

$1.2 Billion Bill at Coke Raises Eyebrows By CONSTANCE L. HAYS n 1998, a grim year for the Coca-Cola Co., one bright spot was the United States, where case volume sales rose a healthy 6 percent. But that appears to have come at a high price. In its annual report, distributed last week, Coca-Cola disclosed that it spent more than $1.2 billion on "direct support for certain marketing activities" for its largest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises, which handles the bulk of Coca-Cola's volume in the United States in addition to sales in several countries in Western Europe. Coca-Cola controls about 42 percent of Coca-Cola Enterprises, which was spun off as a separate, publicly traded company in 1986. The expenditure, nearly twice what Coca-Cola spent on the bottler the year before, included $899 million for marketing and $324 million for vending machines and other equipment. It far outstripped the $640 million spent last year for marketing at all other bottlers in which the company holds equity stakes, the report noted. The amount takes on added significance when compared with Coca-Cola Enterprises earnings for 1998: just $141 million, on revenue of $13.4 billion. Operating income was $869 million, but that dwindled rapidly once the company paid $701 million in interest and $56 million in taxes. James S. Chanos, who runs Kynikos Associates, a money management fund in New York, said the marketing expenses that Coca-Cola has absorbed for Coca-Cola Enterprises were "an increasingly important part of the revenue for C.C.E." nytimes.com I've always liked Chanos' work. The stocks don't always go the way he expects, but the analysis is definitely interesting.