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

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (54261)	4/30/1999 11:42:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Did you listen to the call?

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (54261)	4/30/1999 12:20:00 PM
From: dbblg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>>Everyone knew about losses, investments, etc ? Why this hostile response to a report that exceeded expectations ? Every infrastructure play I have ever followed or invested in has gone through a period when backers, even those who claim to be in for the long haul, start to raise their eyebrows at the ramp in expenses. Sometimes there is a rational basis for their concern (like a change in the discount rate applied to future growth) but mostly it is just human nature. People get bored and/or scared.

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (54261)	4/30/1999 1:23:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 164684

The report hardly exceeeded expectations. Losses were lower than expected but the tone of the conference call was for more growing pains over the next few quarters and increased losses. Amazon did increase their registered customers to over 8.4 million but sales did not increase propotional to that - up about 16%. The sales number looks pretty good, better than expected before the lattest acquisitions, but Amazon would not break out the numbers. And they were fuzy about a lot of other questions or just wouldn't answer them. That leaves questions about how solid the growth will be going forward. One positive factor was that gross margins increased by 1%. Although that could just be noise rather than a trend, Covey indicated that a richer product mix was sold and they hope to reduce costs in the future as the new automated distribution facilities are utilized. During the next several quarters these facilities will have a negative impact on earnings as much of their capacity will go unused. In the long run this expenditure makes good business sense and should be considered "inevitable" for every massive Internet retailer. I think the report was OK which probably isn't good enough to sustain a rally. Forecasts will need to be revised downward and projections for eventual profits pushed out another year or two. The company has saturated their management bandwidth and that limits their ability to respond aggressively to market opportunities.