William, do you know what I love about the "Thing"?
It gets more PR than U Al.
Here's just today.
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DAYTON, Ohio, April 1 (Reuters) - Specialty retailer REX Stores Corp. said Thursday it will sell audio and video equipment for Amazon.com Auctions, a recently launched service from online book and CD giant Amazon.com Inc. .
Shares of REX rose 1-7/16 to hit 13 on the New York Stock Exchange on volume of almost 100,000 shares, more than eight times its average daily trading volume. The stock has a 12-month high of 15-11/16 and a 12-month low of 9-15/16.
Rex said the deal marks its first venture into e-commerce and gives it access to Amazon's nearly 8 million registered customers.
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MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 1, 1999--
Amazon.com Auctions offers NCRI and millions of e-commerce fans a fun, easy-to-use, and trustworthy place to buy computer hardware and software
NCRI is among the first to offer items for bidding at Amazon.com Auctions, the new shopping service from Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the No. 1 online video, music, and book retailer. With almost 8 million customers, Amazon.com is the premier destination for NCRI to reach qualified and experienced online shoppers and have auctions featured across millions of Amazon.com's pages.
Quote from Nora Burch
"As a small business it's like an instant franchise, with one storefront that reaches Amazon.com's millions of customers. People are used to Amazon.com selling things, now we have been invited to sell to Amazon.com e-commerce friendly customers We are taking advantage of a very powerful tool that Amazon.com is offering to small business owners."
Amazon.com Auctions is a customer-friendly destination for shoppers. NCRI will benefit from special advertising opportunities on the Amazon.com Auctions home and category pages and from a variety of management tools, making it easy to register and sell high volumes of items. Because of Amazon.com's familiar design and easy-to-use features, sellers and buyers will enjoy the very best online auction experience.
NCRI played a key role in the development of our online auction marketplace," said Jeff Blackburn, director of merchant services at Amazon.com. "With the help of NCRI and other merchants, we are driving to reach our goal of allowing customers to find, discover, and buy any products they want at Amazon.com."
NCRI is a Discount Whole Sale Company. NCRI offers competitive prices on over 50,000 brand name computer products, software, hardware, networking, as well as customizing computing solutions.
Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN., NCRI is the direct solutions leader in servicing businesses. From small to medium to fortune 1000 companies, as well as government and educational customers nationwide.
NCRI's highly trained account managers offer one on one support and focuses on service and solutions to get you the products and services you need when you need them.
Amazon.com Auctions is the premier destination for people to search for and discover great deals on their favorite collectibles, hard-to-find items, and other goods, such as Networking, point of sale, terminals, printers, raid systems, servers, software, thin client.
The Auctions site will offer items in a safe and secure environment, with the buyers' experience backed by the Amazon.com Auctions Guarantee. The guarantee program sets a new online auction safety and security standard, by providing buyers up to $250 against misrepresentation or non-receipt of goods. Some restrictions apply; guarantee details are available by visiting the Amazon.com Auctions site. Amazon.com is offering $10 gift certificates for all first-time winning bidders as an incentive to discover and purchase items at Amazon.com Auctions, including (any specific items you are selling that you want to highlight). At the same time, NCRI will benefit from having Amazon.com Auctions automatically promoted on millions of Amazon.com's book, music, and video product pages. Our goal at NCRI is to provide low prices while bringing our customers products that represent the best in quality, technology, and value. NCRI's highly trained account managers offer one on one support and focuses on service and solutions to get you the products and services you need when you need them. Customer satisfaction is what we strive for. You can be confident that no matter what you purchase from NCRI you have made a good choice.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), the Internet's No. 1 video, music, and book retailer, opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995. Today, the Amazon.com store has expanded to offer more than 4.7 million book, music-CD, video, DVD, computer-game, and other titles, plus online auctions, secure credit-card payment, personalized recommendations, and streamlined ordering through 1-Click(SM) technology.
Amazon.com operates two international Web sites: www.amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom and www.amazon.de in Germany. Amazon.com also operates PlanetAll (www.planetall.com), a Web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. It also operates the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web's comprehensive and authoritative source of information on more than 150,000 movies and entertainment programs and 500,000 cast and crew members dating from the birth of film in 1892 to the present.
This announcement contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, Amazon.com's limited operating history, anticipated losses, unpredictability of future revenues, potential fluctuations in quarterly operating results, seasonality, intense competition, risks associated with system interruption, management of potential growth, high leverage and risks of new business areas, international expansion, business combinations, and strategic alliances.
More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1998. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Internet Movie Database, PlanetAll, Earth's Biggest Bookstore, and 1-Click are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. <<
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(Bloomberg's Week in Review recaps the week's top business stories.)
Dow Closes Above 10,000 for First Time
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 for the first time Monday as a rally in oil shares propelled U.S. stocks to their biggest gains in three weeks. A 184-point surge led by International Business Machines Corp. sent the Dow industrials to 10,006.78. It was the average's ninth 1,000-point milestone since 1982 in an unprecedented bull market fueled by falling interest rates and, in the 1990s, the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. Since the Federal Reserve resolved in the early 1980s to quash inflation, the U.S. stock market's value has grown by more than $11 trillion, according to Wilshire Associates Inc. (NI USS)
BP Amoco to Buy Atlantic Richfield
BP Amoco Plc, the world's third-biggest publicly traded oil company, agreed Thursday to pay $26.8 billion in stock for Atlantic Richfield Co. to create the largest U.S. oil refiner and producer. BP Amoco will exchange 0.82 of an American depositary share for each Arco share. The bid, which Arco directors approved Wednesday, represents a 26 percent premium to the company's market value Friday, before their talks were announced. Arco also had about $6.2 billion of net debt at the end of 1998. The transaction is the fourth major acquisition in the oil industry since August, when BP agreed to buy Amoco Corp. for $62 billion. BP Amoco said the Arco purchase would generate pretax savings of $1 billion a year by 2001, helping the two cope with a two-year slump in oil prices. Together, the two companies will refine about 1.9 million barrels a day of oil, surpassing an alliance between Texaco Inc., the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Aramco. (ARC US )
Melissa E-Mail Virus Hits Computers
A computer virus attack caused Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's biggest defense contractor, to shut down its sprawling e- mail system and experts fear more variations of the malicious program are on the way. Merrill Lynch & Co. idled its e-mail servers from late Friday to early Sunday. Lucent Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. were affected in varying degrees by the rogue computer code, which sends a proliferation of e-mail messages that can bog down computer systems. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the problem and experts say they're stunned by how far and fast the virus -- dubbed W97M-Melissa -- has spread, a testament to how pervasive electronic mail has become. Already, a new version, called Papa, has made its way onto the Internet. (NI SOF)
Yahoo! to Buy Broadcast.com for $5.7 Bln
Yahoo! Inc., the No. 1 Internet directory, agreed to buy Broadcast.com Inc. for about $5.7 billion in stock and options to add sports, news and music programs to its World Wide Web site. Yahoo will exchange 0.7722 shares for each share of Broadcast.com, or about $130 a share. Yahoo also will convert Broadcast.com options into options for 5.51 million Yahoo shares. Yahoo Chairman and Chief Executive Tim Koogle is seeking to attract more users. The Santa Clara, California-based company, which already has 35 million registered users and hosts 2,225 merchants and advertisers, in January agreed to buy GeoCities Inc. to gain that company's 3.5 million members and its personal Web site service. The acquisition of Broadcast.com, the brainchild of Chairman Mark Cuban and CEO Todd Wagner, adds multimedia programming for sports, business press conferences, music and news to Yahoo's services. (YHOO US )
Microsoft Antitrust Talks to Continue
Microsoft Corp. and antitrust enforcers signaled Wednesday they are committed to continuing talks to settle government charges the company illegally protects its dominance in the market for computer operating systems. After five months of trading barbs in a trial that's now in recess, lawyers for the company and the government stood together outside the federal courthouse in Washington and expressed solidarity on the need for confidentiality during negotiations. Microsoft General Counsel William Neukom and two other Microsoft lawyers met Tuesday for two hours with representatives of the U.S. Justice Department and 19 states to formally present the software giant's proposal to end the case. The world's biggest software company made the first move March 22, delivering to antitrust enforcers a list of issues it would be willing to discuss as part of a settlement. (MSFT US TCNI LAW)
Amazon.com Throws Hat Into Auction Ring<<
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In March 30 CHICAGO story headlined "FOCUS-Express Scripts surges on Web site plan" please read in 10th paragraph ... "Express Scripts did about 8 million mail order prescriptions last year" ... instead of ... "Express Scripts did about $8 million mail order prescriptions last year." (Corrects to clarify the prescriptions were in number, not dollars.)
A corrected repetition follows.
By Gregory Crawford
CHICAGO, March 30 (Reuters) - After laying plans to build an online drugstore, Express Scripts Inc. saw its stock surge on Tuesday, as investors continued to be enamored with anything and everything Internet.
After the stock market closed Monday, the St. Louis-based pharmacy benefits management (PBM) firm said it would launch two Web sites to sell drugs and provide information.
By Tuesday afternoon, the St. Louis company's stock was up 22 percent, trading at $91, ahead $16.94, but off its best level of the day, a record high $105.50.
"Online drugstores are the hot thing now and you're seeing them pop up," said Gregory Simpson, an analyst who follows Express Scripts for A.G. Edwards. "There are people out there that invest in Internet stocks who don't know what a PBM is."
Express Scripts said that in the second quarter it would begin selling drugs over the Internet at www.YourPharmacy.com and launch a companion Web site, www.DrugDigest.org, providing consumer drug information.
The Web sites will tap into the company's customer base of more than 36.5 million people, which stems from its relationships with major employers and managed care organizations.
"If I were going to start up an online drugstore, it would be awfully nice to have 40 to 50 million clients or customers that are kind of captive," Simpson said, adding that the venture is likely to contribute to Express Scripts' profits.
In a statement Monday, Greg Rotenberg, president of the as-yet-unnamed subsidiary Express Scripts created to launch and manage the Web sites, said the company would leverage its relationship with Express Scripts and many of the nation's leading employers and managed care organizations to have a direct dialogue with its target customers.
Simpson said Express Scripts would have an advantage over start-up online drugstores like Drugstore.com, which is 46 percent owned by cyber bookstore Amazon.com Inc. , and PlanetRx, which launched earlier this month.
"Express Scripts did about 8 million mail order prescriptions last year, so they not only know how to do it, but they've got the facility and the capacity," he said.
"That's why you're seeing the reaction" in the stock, he added. "When you look at what it's going to take to be successful in this business, a PBM like Express Scripts doing this -- I think the odds of success are just tremendously greater."
12:41 04-01-99
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CHICAGO, April 1 (Reuters) - Craig Hallum analyst Robert Evans said Thursday he raised his 12- to 15-month share price target for video game retailer Funco Inc. to $32-$35 from $28-$30, citing the company's new relationship with Amazon.com Inc. .
Funco has struck a relationship with Amazon.com to be a charter member of Amazon's online market, where Funco will sell new and used video games, the analyst said in a research note.
"We believe this is a strong testament to the value of the Funcoland brand in the video game market," Evans said.
Funco's existing Web sales are growing rapidly and the Amazon relationship further establishes Funco as the leading brand among video game retailers, the note said.
Evans expects Funco to increase its revenue by 27 percent this year and its earnings 21 percent.
Funco reiterated a buy for aggressive growth investors, the analyst said.
Shares of Funco were off 2-3/4 at 19-1/4.
10:43 04-01-99
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Do you what's scary? There's even more! but I've run out of gas. Aren't you glad.:-) |
