Continue reading Amazon had a great Q4, but don't buy just yet

Amazon had a great Q4, but don't buy just yet originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon (AMZN) hits new low on bleak holiday outlook originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've got to be honest, I wasn't so sure that Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle device would be a hit. But, according to BusinessWeek, it seems like it's doing okay. Kindle, which is a reading platform for e-books, actually experienced sell-outs after it was launched last fall. And now, CBS's (NYSE: CBS) Simon & Schuster has upped its support of the platform by increasing the number of titles from its portfolio to be sold on Kindle. How does 5,000 more titles from Simon & Schuster sound?

Just great, I'm sure Jeff Bezos would say. And who can blame him? It looks like people are really taking to Kindle, and although I don't think reading books for pleasure in such an electronic manner will ever come remotely close to challenging printed tomes, I know it's still important for Amazon to have a strategy in this arena. And like I mentioned at the beginning, the fact that Kindle seems to have had a strong start is very impressive.

Continue reading Amazon's Kindle continues to attract book titles

Amazon's Kindle continues to attract book titles originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon outlook disappoints investors originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Has anybody else out there noticed that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), recently sold $135 million of his stock? Not to worry, these are his regular 10b5 plan sales that are pre-scheduled with the SEC. Just smart diversification I suppose.

Normally, I would think this is not that big a deal since he owns billions of dollars of the stock as the single largest shareholder. If I were him, I would be selling too, in particular because I have felt that AMZN is overpriced for quite a while. (See Serious Money: AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, ISRG -- at what Price?)

The stock jumped early this month when Amazon announced the retirement of debt and a stock buyback plan over the next two years. This was a temporary affect; the stock has been trading in the low $70's recently, give or take a few bucks.

But what strikes me as curious is that this buyback plan is announced while insider selling has rarely been higher! The buyback and Bezos selling inspired me to look at the latest insider trading. When I checked it out I discovered company directors, officers, and "affiliated persons" have all been sellers and only sellers. To be fair some of the sales are listed as 'planned'; however, the plan does not have to be filed very far in advance, so I am not impressed by this.

Continue reading Amazon insiders selling and stock buybacks too?

Amazon insiders selling and stock buybacks too? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon.com Inc.

Amazon posts strong quarter (update) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) will report 3rd quarter earnings per share (EPS) on October 23rd:

AMZN November option implied volatility of 67 is above its 26-week average of 41 according to Track Data, suggesting that traders are positioning themselves for larger price risks.

SunTrust Banks (NYSE: STI), as of June 29th, STI had total assets of $180.3 billion and total deposits of $122.9 billion:

STI will report EPS on October 18th. STI call option volume of 3,015 contracts compares to put volume of 3,223 contracts. STI November option implied volatility of 32 is above its 26-week average of 26 according to Track Data, suggesting larger risk.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Option update 10-17-07: Amazon volatility of 67 suggests large price movement ahead originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Two days ago I posted Amazon - everyone gets it but me wondering who the heck was driving the Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) share price up to such ridiculous levels. Then I spoke with a fund manager at a large investment company and he reminded me that Amazon shares were very tightly held by a few entities. So I looked it up on AOL Money & Finance and found the following.

• Jeff Bezos still holds 24% of the stock
• Legg Mason Capital Management, Inc. holds 20.25%
• T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. holds 7.5%
• TCW Asset Management Company holds 5.5%
• ClearBridge Advisors 5.25%.

You can see that the top five shareholders control 62.5% of the stock. Looking further I found that the top ten shareholders own about 75% of the outstanding shares. This does not account for other insiders besides Bezos who hold 3% to 5% of the shares. If 15% to 18% of the shares are sold short that does not leave much play in the market and it allows for the potential manipulation of the shares.

Continue reading Who owns Amazon.com - really?

Who owns Amazon.com - really? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon's Bezos paid only $1.28 million in 2006 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Voice-activated search: From ChaCha to Microsoft originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

10 CEO's That Need To Go: 3 Down, 7 Remain originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Well, of course, the founder of the company, Jeff Bezos, was thinking on a much grander scale; that is, his company would be the dominant player in ecommerce. And he has achieved that. The problem is that the company's financials are still lackluster. While other dot-coms, like eBay and Google, post strong profits, Amazon.com really looks like an a brick-in-mortar play.

However, Bezos is now moving into other areas. For example, he is allowing the world to use the company's sophisticated infrastructure, such as for storage, fulfillment and so on. In fact, the company has some big-time clients for these services, such as Microsoft. In fact, today, at the Web 2.0 Conference, Bezos made it clear that this utility strategy is a big priority.

True, the strategy does have some allure. No doubt, much of the Amazon.com infrastructure is underutilized (because the business is seasonal and subject to occasional spikes). What's more, there are many companies that would prefer to outsource certain operations. Actually, this is particularly the case for upstart Web 2.0 companies, which can avoid heavy costs.

But, the fear is that Amazon.com could be losing its focus. Its core business of ecommerce is coming under attack from players like Google as well as traditional retailers such as Wal-Mart.

Also, building the systems to deliver these utilities is not cheap. Amazon.com has spent $650 million in technologies in 2006. What's more, it will need to spend marketing dollars to find B2B customers. There are also dollars needed to keep the customers.

So, while this may be great for Web 2.0 companies, the pay-off for Amazon.com does look fuzzy.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Amazon.com's Bezos waxes about utilities originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Is Amazon (still) buying revenue? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

How in the world is Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) holding on to its stock price? Who is supporting these outrageous figures? Why is there no profit taking? Do investors think it's going higher still, without the profits to back it up? Are investors buying CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos's mystic ethos?

For starters the shares are controlled by surprisingly few entities. If I am reading the data correctly, Jeffrey Bezos owns 101,198,359 shares as of October 27, 2006. Legg Mason Inc. holds another 98,122,167shares and TCW, Inc. controls another 26,971,084 shares, both as of June 30, 2006. That means that approximately 60% of the shares are held by three entities.

Looking still further, insiders control 25.22% of the outstanding shares and institutions control 73.20% for a total of 98.42% which means individual investors own only 1.58% of the outstanding shares. For comparison Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) insiders and Institutions control 87.45%, leaving individual investors with 12.55%. Seems the small guy remains at the mercy of the big players and will likely be left without a seat when the music stops. With a price to earnings ratio hovering between 54 and 56 lately there is not much room for error (actually none) so the the true believers better be right.

Am I the only one bewildered at Amazon's stock price. I don't think so.

Another concern brewing: Are increasing marketing expenditures cutting into profits?

The latest from Business Week provides some insight into Jeff Bezos's gamble on becoming a platform player. Just because Bezos chooses to gamble does not mean the individual investor should. After all, he is gambling with your money -- especially when you consider the inflated stock price.

Someone once told me about a person new to the investment world who got a hot tip on a stock that was trading at a good price with strong market possibilities. He asked his broker to buy 500 shares. The stock went up, so he bought another 500 shares. It continued to rise in price and he felt he had really got a good tip and wanted to take full advantage of it before it made a major move so he bought 4,000 more shares. Sure enough the stock popped the very next day. His confidence beaming, he called his broker to buy another 5,000 shares -- doubling his position. His broker tried to discourage him telling him there were no sure things but he insisted and his broker reluctantly increased his position to 10,000 shares. By the end of the week he was up 200%. Not wanting to let his greed get the best of him he decided he had made enough so he called his broker and asked him to sell out his position. The broker replied, "to whom? You're the only one buying."

If so many Amazon shares are in the hands of Legg Mason and it decides to take some profits, who will they sell to? Jeff Bezos has often proven to be insightful and inspirational, but I would keep my eye on a seat just in case that music stops.

Interested in reading more? Check out my other posts for Bloggingstocks here.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for Design and Research of an architecture & planning firm.

Who's supporting Amazon? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Can Amazon mind the store? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 06 Nov 2006 11:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Is Amazon really headed down the right track? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Selling things online appears to be a great idea for a business. In fact, it's a fun model: we are all so excited about the many opportunities for new businesses to thrive online. In the case of some major Internet companies, we have bid up the stocks to very high levels. But history tells us that we have done so at our own peril.

Yesterday I wrote that Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is overspending on growth and is thus overpriced, and concluded that the market has lost its collective sense once more. I raised numerous questions and received some thoughtful support in the comments. Since then, I have asked myself one more inescapable question which I pose today: What choice do they have?

From the inception of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos has argued that, in this particular business, "first mover status" is critical to its success. The market supported this thesis and we were off to the races. Amazon has been on a spending spree, growing its sales quarter after quarter. But Amazon is trapped. It must continue to grow at all costs. It has reported top line sales growth again in the latest quarter -- but very disappointing profits.

The truth is Amazon is just like a great big supermarket. That is what it wanted to be, the online supermarket to the world. I think Bezos has achieved his goal but there is a HUGE problem here: supermarkets have very low profit margins!

Continue reading The Amazon spending trap

The Amazon spending trap originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon is following a questionable path with CEO Jeff Bezos playing the Piper and investors heading toward the cliff.

For years I have been down on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) the stock, even though I buy things on the site perhaps once a month -- 80 percent of it books. I have never been able to accept its valuation. I like the service but can't rationalize the stock price.

It currently has a TTM (trailing twelve month) P/E (price to earnings) of 55.82, based on yesterday's close of $38.15 . Perhaps it should change its name to "Amazing.com" (which actually exists) based on its ability to convince investors that the stock is worth anything near this price.

For comparison, the P/E of Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is 60.55, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is 43.09, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)
is 33.29, Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)is 35.75, Hansen Natural Corp. (NASDAQ: HANS) is 35.82 and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is 19.21.

Continue reading Amazon is overpriced and overspending on growth

Amazon is overpriced and overspending on growth originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Cramer slams Amazon.com, says Bezos 'buying revenue' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

37signals is one of the Web2.0 firms at the forefront. In fact, the company even has its own manifesto, called Getting Real. The book has sold more than 20,000 copies. I'm one of those customers - and, I have to say, the book is a great read. It's an excellent primer on how to build a successful Web-based business.

As for 37signals, it has a suite of collaboration software solutions. They are elegant, cool and useful. The company has been a tremendous innvoator, such as its open source efforts with Ruby on Rails. Also, the company has avoided the "free-is-good" mentality and actually charges for its wares.

Well, 37Signals received an investment from Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

Jason Fried, the founder of 37signals, had an interesting blog post on the investment. Besides money, 37signals wants the "wisdom of a very special entrepreneur who's been through what we're going through."

This is a smart move and should be a big benefit.

But this is something Amazon.com shareholders may not want to see. After all, the company had a horrible second quarter. Perhaps the first piece of advice to 37signals should be: focus.

37Signals and the attention span of Amazon.com's Bezos originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.