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Amazon Makes a Profit
sofar writes: "Amazon finally makes a profit. Well, only $ 5mln, but maybe you can actually earn something on your stock now. At 1c a share it's no pension fund in Florida yet." I wonder how much of that profit represents 1-click licensing fees.
Hell has finally frozen over... Good day.
Yeah, but it was EBITA - earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization. In other words, they didn't count a bunch of stuff.
In their defense, they said they hoped to have positive EBITA -- their projection was not (yet) for real earnings.
A sign of the Apololypse?
Like AOL/TW suing, say, Microsoft?
Oh, wait...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
At 5c a share it's no pension fund in Florida yet
No, but I hear Enron is looking for buyers.
I know it's hard to keep track of all this info, but a whole lot of stories have basic errors in them. WHere do we draw the line between simply printing what was submitted and fixing errors?
Of course, if you gave me billions of dollars in venture capital I could probably find a way to give you back $5 million too.
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charlton heston is more of a man than yo
Despite their lame patents, Amazon is still one of the best places to get books on the internet. Part of their sucess could be their dealings with brick and mortar stores, like Borders. I also like the fact that I can pick up music that I can't find elsewhere like (quick plug) Dispatch. I'm glad this recession doesn't have them belly up.
Even if it is Amazon, it's good to see the .com model does produce profit.
I just hope they didn't earn a profit from selling customer data, the infamous 1-click patent, and all the other dirty tricks.
A Human Right
I wonder how much of that profit represents 1-click licensing fees.
Jaded? Party of one? Your table's ready...
Meanwhile, porn sites have been making money since a text drawing of a tit was placed on usenet.
I can't believe people. Amazon posts a profit for the first time (and on a reasonable time schedule in the real world) and then someone complains that it's not a big enough profit. What did the submitter expect? a 1-billion dollar windfall? considering the state of the US economy at the moment the fact that amazon made a profit is even better.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
I would have submitted this first, but i was hit by a flying pig on the way to my computer..
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
But 1c per share:
Amazon reported net income of $5 million, or a penny a share, under generally accepted accounting principles, well ahead of analysts' expectations.
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Error 500: Internal sig error
Not to put too fine a point on it, but... Do any of you believe these numbers? Really?
Their accounting staff can manipulate the numbers to show anything. Even if they are following GAAP rules, there can be serious issues in the way that the financials are tallied and reported.
We rely on auditors to make sure the numbers jibe, but after Enron, I am starting to question everything that I read, particularly from firms who have never been able to make a dime. YMMV
i assume that most readers of slashdot recognize the value in the concept of having an internet business, and that many of the dot-coms were ahead of their time -- beyond the visible spectrum for most americans.
it is therefore nice to see a pure internet business pulling ahead. i am tired of ignorant, 60-year-old pundits claiming that the internet experiment failed. it is inevitable, and this is yet another small step in that direction.
go get it
I call for a Congressional investigation... stop this Enron non-sense, this is truly a scandal... Someone making money on the Internet without porn or MLM... Something is fishy here.
"I'm hurt, and confused and I don't know what to say... no comment!" --Alfalfa, 3/12/83
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
They cut headcount to the bone and trimmed as much fat as they could to make these numbers. If they are able to grow revenues without increasing costs, this will be a huge victory for them.
As a retailer, it is incorrect to look at them in a quarter over quarter view. We need to look at them year to year, and they obviously showed quite a bit of growth in both the top line and the bottom line. We'll have to see how well they can keep this up next January.
Congrats, Amazon. We'll be watching.
What's with all the hell freezing over cracks? Is it really so difficult to believe a retailer would eventually turn a profit?
Or all we all just amazed that at least one DotCom company had a solid business plan, stuck with it, and now has something to show for it?
Just because Amazon turns a slight profit doesn't make your stocks worth anything.
In addition to raising money through sale of stock, Amazon has also raised money by selling bonds. Lots of bonds. The ammount of securities debt Amazon is carrying is far more than the total value of the company.
Now for the fun bit: when push comes to shove, bondholders get paid before stockholders. Always. The people who loaned the company will get paid back before the people who bought part of it. Now it's worth noting that the securities amazon.com has issued are trading at very low rates. They're junk bonds. The market thinks there's a good chance that Amazon will not be able to cover the interest payments on those bonds in the long term. If that happens, the shareholders get $0.00 from any sale of assets.
This makes Amazon.com a risky buy. Not as bad as VA Software, (people find Amazon's services useful afterall) but still risky.
--Shoeboy
Not true. The pro forma profits were $35 million (from about the middle of the article). A quote:
Excluding those expenses, the e-tailer's pro forma profits topped estimates handily, reaching $35 million, or 9 cents a share. According to First Call, Amazon was expected to lose 7 cents a share, excluding goodwill, on sales of $1.01 billion.
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
And they have Linux to thank for it. According to this article Linux saved them $17 million. Therefore, if it wasn't for Linux, they'd be losing $12 million and they wouldn't have been able to keep their promises to Wall Street.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
At 5c a share . . .
A profit, but not five cents yet.
Amazon reported net income of $5.1 million, or a penny a diluted share, compared with a net loss of $545.1 million, or $1.53 a basic share, a year earlier.
The Gardener
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What you believe is irrelevant (and incorrect). It was a real net profit, not pro forma nonsense (i.e. Ticketmaster).
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
If I recall, they also don't include the cost of migrating from NT to Linux, nor do they include the cost of laying off people either.
And whoever described Amazon as having a consistent or solid business plan has a short memory. Sellings books and movies is a solid business plan. Selling hammers and furniture is insane.
I'm not impressed at all by a company that has had to spend several billion dollars to make a profit of $5 million. First of all, $5 million is peanuts, and the stated profit takes none of the infrastructure expenses they've been making for the last several years.
If I spend $10 billion on a factory one year, and make $5 million the next year after operating expenses, am I profitable? No way. Not until the $10 billion factory is paid for.
There was also few details given about the expense exclusions that have likely been included in the calculation. Let's see what the SEC filings have to say (they're not out yet).
And even still, a $5 million profit on a $10 billion+ investment is a pretty lousy return (rate = 0.05%).
mainly because ANY company showing a profit is a good thing in todays economy. It seems they got the ship righted before it hit the iceberg.
Sent from your iPad.
this is proof that in an infinite amount of time, the quantnum probability of anything happening is at least 1
The story says the profit is net profit according to generally accepted accounting principles. (Of course the real scandal is that many companies are choosing to ignore GAAP in favor of the "pro forma" crap you discuss, but it doesn't apply here.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Amazon is the best ePortal in the world! I think that Amazon should buy every corporation in the world, and patent every tiny detail of every operation that takes place in the resulting massive huge enormous multinational corporation. For example, "Method and Apparatus Attaching Manually Recorded Hardcopy," meaning, a patent on paperclipping some handwritten notes together, or, "Method and Apparatus for Disposing of Manually Generated Hardcopy of Temporary Use," meaning, a patent on tossing a piece of paper in the trash.
Then, once all these actions take place, every person will pay an Amazon Tax on every transaction they make. Amazon will then buy all the governments of the world, enslave the human people, put a computer in command of those people, patent that, charge ridiculous license fees for it, put all the people of the world into chambers in a power plant and use them as batteries, and next thing you know, we have The Matrix.
oooooOoooooHooooo oooooWoooooEoooooLoooooLooooo
No, if you read the article instead of applying your pre-formed assumptions, you'll find that the profit was under generally accepted accounting principles. The pro forma profit was even higher. Amazon beat out the expectations of the naysayers.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
This comment is not lame, despite what the nice web page tells me.
Time is running out. Get those books cooking!
Speak truth to power.
it amazes me that you can sell 1 billion dollars worth of stuff and still lose money
From the article:
Not sure exactly what the "services" are (like everyone else, I hope it's not 1-click licenses) but this pretty much confirms what my gut told me: Amazon is good at selling books and media, but really lousy at selling everything else. I really hope that they realize this and get out of the TV's-and-lawn-chairs business. They're still a great place to buy books, but I've never bought anything bigger than about 1 cubic foot from them, and I'm pretty sure I never will.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990406
[scene: MS techie in moon suit, facing the perfect home for a new evil AI (in other words, an Arnold Shwartzenegger-type guy)]
MS Techie:[thinking] How do I knock this guy out? He's positively huge. I don't even think a mallet would do him in.
*thinks*
Techie: I heard Amazon.com actually turned a profit this quarter.
*whoomp* [Arnold faints]
Techie:[thinking] Lies and damned lies...
This
NO, YOU ARE WRONG!!!
OK, you're right.
this article says that pro-forma profit was ~$35 million. Net profit was ~$5 mil. I sit corrected.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
First off - I don't hold anything against the one-click patent. If they want to waste money on silly patents, that's their problem.
Now that that's out of the way, it's nice to see them prove the nay-sayers wrong. But it doesn't mean a whole lot for the future - in order to get to this Milestone, they've spent upwards of $10 billion. They're paying $120 million a year in interest. If you take their 4th-quarter sales ($1.12 billion) as a guide to the next year's sales (generous - 4th quarter includes Christmas), you come out with 3% of their income going on interest payments.
I really hope they succeed - I order pretty much all my stuff from amazon.de - but this profit is by no means the end of the road. It's nice to see they managed to declare GAAP-standard profits, though, instead of using the pro-forma get-out clause.
See the official press release here.
PenguiNet: the (shareware) Windows SSH client
Erm, I'm sorry to bring you down from the clouds but most internet startup failures were not due to them being ahead of their time.
Unless of course in the future a sucessful business is one that make a huge loss with no real path to profitability.
Yes Amazon is starting to go from loss, to break even and finally profit but I would hardly call them ahead of their time since at the end of the day they sell mainly Books, CD's, Video's and DVD's.
The profits being reported are NOT pro forma. See this quote from the CNN.com story:
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
So what is the cost to you for that good book service. Amazon's patents are exactly why I do not order from them. I did order from them alittle over two years ago and yes they are excellent at what they do. That said, noway am I buying from them. There agressive patent tactics leave me feeling dirty when at there website.
Just my view.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Please keep in mind this profit is measured pro forma
Doesn't read the article or even understand the point of the story, ie that Amazon makes its first real (ie not pro forma) profit, and gets marked up as insightful ... great going!
Reuters story can be found here and there is a story here on The Guardian.
--Metrollica
This article states:
Amazon didn't even have to resort to controversial pro forma accounting methods. It posted a net profit of $5 million, or 1 cent a share, for the quarter, using standard accounting methods.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
i'm amazed by the amount of effort that has gone into this apparently completely useless post.
How many internet companies (where it matters not to the customer where you are) do you think would have been doing much better if they had not headquartered in high-priced tech centers like Seattle and San Francisco?
I'm still giddy over Netscape vs M$.
Some good for Seattle area, some bad, all is in balance.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
but the question i have is this:
is this really proof that amazon's business model is sound?
What the hell are you talking about? They are actually SELLING things which people might actually WANT, and be willing to pay for, and presenting said things in a manner that makes it easy to find what you are looking for.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most people think "ad revenue" when you say "dot-com model?"
As someone whose just got laid off from Macaroni its nice to see a company making a profit and having something good said about it for once.
All the negative press and talk of recessions etc is a very good way of getting a recession...
Let's hope that a) amazon keep the profits going up, b) they've had their bout of bloodletting and don't need to again (or atleast for a long time) and c) that I can manage to persuade my pig to land...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
So Linux helped making Amazon profitable-- a next to impossible event-- happen. Cool.
Amazon has taken the life blood out of the independant bookseller trade: a trade that provided for families all over the country (world?) Now that wealth has been taken and put in the pocket of the smiling dwarf Bezos/Potemkin. What a joke! Can anyone say "Amaron.com"?
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
and not an expense.
Why? The factory is worth $10 billion dollars. Amazon could sell it if they had to. Then the factory depreciates over time and that's when the company can expense it.
I agree that this is a shitty return, but there's a big difference between spending $10 billion on a factory and $10 billion on programmers salaries.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Greedy vulture capitalists distracted the contruction of internet commerce in the late 1990s. Finally a few companies are getting it to work properly.
1 quarter of profit? No projection of a *yearly* profit in sight? Enron doesn't have a monopoly on online retailers!
This sig intentionally Left Bank.
For a while there, there announcments all read along the lines of "Unfortunately, sales increased last quarter, so we lost even more money than the previous quarter."
Better sell both my shares of stock...
You think you're so rich...But there's one thing you can't buy....A dinosaur
sales of ice skates in hades have just increased 10,000%...
There is a recent story here about Amazon's future.
It talks about Amazon making its way to open real stores and even let customers order online and pick up their purchases at stores like Circuit City to save on shipping. Amazon has started working with its competitors by providing them with services instead of competing. Amazon is also going to provide e-commerce services to AOL subscribers starting next year.
--Metrollica
I realize, considering the amount of money sucked up by Amazon, 5 million isn't a LOT... but for someone of this size, actually demonstrating that they can make money off of the internet is GREAT. They, along with many others, funneled that money into starting a whole new industry. That takes time and a lots and lots of money, before getting a return. For their business model, maybe this is a sign that they are past that initial point of "figuring it out". They may actually have a business model that works, one that can make money. The infrastructure is in place, the R&D is done (at least the big chucks of it). Give 'em a year and see what happens, who knows, we may look back on this as the start of profitable e-commerce retailers
An Item that the article didn't mention was their used items. This is a very smart move by Amazon(and a direct rip-off of half.com) since all they do is list used items that people want to get rid of, Amazon gets a percentage of whatever a person sells and it costs Amazon $0.0X money.
But the big "straight numbers" problem with Amazon can be illustrated as follows:
Quarter ending December 31, 2001
Total assets $ 1,637,547,000
- Total liabilities 3,077,547,000
= Total stockholders' deficit ($1,440,000,000)
Quarter ending Sep 30, 2001
Total Assets $1,346,368,000
- Total Liabilities $2,800,362,000
= Total Stockholder Equity ($1,453,994,000)
Would you pay $4.6B (about its current total market price) for a company that continues to be worth around $-1.4B? Take note that I am not accounting for "hope" and "prospects" here.
If they double, triple, or even quantuple this quarter's $5M take, it will be a long time before Amazon.com can justify the enormous chasm between debt and assets. Amazon.com must have some seriously bright prospects to justify their market cap!
The above fiancial data is based on SEC filings and is from the quarter ending Sep 30, 2001 and today's press release from Amazon.com.
... are as follows ...
... see? you dont have to piss ppl off with unsolicited emails to try and make money. sometimes you can just work hard at it (and yes, patent and sell off stuff, but they arent the only business to do it, so GET OVER IT already)
... i think this page should be archived somewhere for posterity. im pretty sure that even winnie the poohs personal website doesnt have that phrase on it.
1) amazon appear to have made a profit without anyone (or me at least) every receiving any spam from them (sure, i get occasional mailing list stuff, but i signed up for that when i created my account with them)
2) the news link in the article has what may be the worlds first html anchor of the phrase "pooh-poohed"
I don't get it.
Trolls at least do something conterversal to get a good war going.
Flames are directed at something/someone
Insight full post, are well, insightfull.
this is none of those, its a meaningless statement with no gain. why?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So pigs can fly, you can throw snoballs into hell
And yes, there is a Santa Claus.
I never thought it possible.
Keep in mind, those are proforma earnings.... their profit is only after they have written off millions of expenses.....the profit is an illusion.
Alright, hand over your cash
You didn't believe in me?
Dancin Santa
The numbers are GAAP earnings. Now you can disagree with GAAP, but these numbers are not pro-forma.
All of you unbeleivers that were talking about "dot-com death" and such. Take that!
I ordered some tools from Amazon, and the order was outsourced to a mail-order tool supply house.
... but they were able to capture my business. Seems like a sound business plan to me ...
So they aren't even trying to stock hammers and furniture
BTW, if you haven't checked out Amazon's tool department, you should give it a look. Very comprehensive!
I'll share it with you, if you promise not to distribute it. Here it is:
(.)
disclaimer: unabashed fan of Amazon
It's been mentioned how helpful Amazon is for those who don't live in an urban center.
What is more notable is how many small presses Amazon has saved. It has given "shelf space" to small/speciality presses who couldn't get the back dusty corner in a mall store. Some time back, more than a year, I remember reading an article which contrasted Amazon's sales with typical brick & morter bookstores. B&M's sales are 80% best sellers, 20% "others". Amazon's sales were the reverse. Good for small presses, non-mainstream writers, & folks who don't live near specialty bookstores.
Anytime I need to read about book / dvd reviews, I head on to Amazon site.
Sure they are not darling red-hat (one click patent and all), but they run a decent web site.
Generally VCs get out at or shortly after the IPO. It's the large institutional investors (read pension funds) that end up getting stuck holding the bag. The VCs and thier LPs got thier money back many times over and are generally long gone.
VCs invest in very risky, very high growth companies. They expect a 100x return on investment becasue they know that only one in 20 is going to make it. 5x investment overall isn't bad but you have to invest in a lot of companies in order for it to work out. Once a company IPOs, 100x returns just aren't there. And besides, I want VCs investing in high risk stuff. There are plenty of stock brokers out there to take care of investing in the companies that have already made the transition from private to public.
So weep not for the VCs but don't curse them either.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
If you'd been reading Slashdot today, you would have noticed the other story about Amazon.
While they did spend a lot on advertising, they also bought very expensive sorting machines for thier warehouses. The efficency of that machine is what let them hire fewer workers and in turn make a profit - they don't just have big expensive warehouses, they also have a massive sorting machine and a great process for getting things shipped quickly that would probably be an intangible asset worth quite a lot apart from the physical assets.
As for the profit being sustainable, they noted in same article that they think they can double output from those warehouses using the same amount of labor. It seems like at the moment Amazon will turn into the most efficient game in town for turning around web based orders, which in turn should help it stay competitive.
I know I use Amazon for almost all my movie/CD/book shopping (Ok, sometimes I use FatBrain). Sure, I can save a few dollars on average here or there but what I have learned from experience is that Amazon is a lot more likley to have stuff well packed and arrive to me in good shape. Witness buy.com who has a number of times sent a few CD's loose in a box with one air cell thrown in as an afterthought!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
None, I'd venture. If you measure the savings made by Amazon migrating (flocking might be a better word) to Linux, you'd more than equal $5m.
Have a nice dividend (snigger).
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
You know what? I get the best deals on tech books at my local Border's than I do at Amazon! Especially if you include shipping and handling! Amazon is dead!!
Look at the financial reports. Need I say more?!?
You won't have Chapters/Indigo to kick around much longer.
They'll be pushing up daisies very soon now.
(Where will all the candle buyers go?)
If they lose money on every sale they make, why do people still think this is amazing?
The future isn't what it used to be.
Since my article on Google's profit was rejected yesterday I can only assume Slashdot editors only care about the performance of dotcom companies they own stock in.
Wall Street seems to be full of them: people buying stocks based on the "bigger sucker" theory, hoping that whether the stocks were worth anything or not there will be a bigger sucker to sell them to later. The whole dot-com crash was due to the failure of this theory: eventually you reach the biggest sucker.
However, there are still a few people out there who actually look at company earnings and (wait for it...) dividends before buying a stock. If you've got a few spare bucks you want to gamble with, being one of these "investors" may not sound like fun, but people playing with their retirement funds might want to give it a try.
Really now. He did it. He said he'd do it and he actually pulled it off.
The one-click patent, while frivolous, would have been done by anyone with a brain...when noticed it was a unique, competitive edge...but I'll digress upon it's stupidity.
Hellsyeah & Cheers Jeff...Good Bloody Job
I saw on the news the other day that in the midst of the recession, e-bay is booming. Now, I wonder what e-bay is doing that Amazon is not. The companies are rather similar.
As if he were the first one ever to think, "Hey, I'll sell books to people and make money".
You could have just pointed to the cartoon and let us see it unprepared, but I'm sure it will be twice as funny now that I've read the transcript!
That was a good start, but next time, try explaining the joke, too: "And so when the guy says Amazon.com turned a profit, it's so ridiculous that this super computer gets burned out, because that's how ridiculous Amazon turning a profit would be!" I know User Friendly cartoons are already a continuous laugh riot on their own, but if you'll follow this simple advice you can help make them even more hilarious!
This is a Pro Forma profit, which is a nice (and legal) way of saying they've deviated from GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and done some creative accounting. CPA types will be glad to explain why there are several dozen ways to define $PROFIT.
Please, check the footnotes...
Read the article again. That's $5 million NET not pro forma. Everyone expected a pro forma, but Amazon surprised them and posted a REAL proffit.
Your remark about the "one click licensing fees" is most shameful don't you think?
LOLOLOLOLO
Amazon has had a habit in the past of basically moving costs out of the last quarter of the year into other quarters, so their "Christmas" quarter always looks great (though this one looks a shedload better than their year-ago, that's for sure).
Maybe somebody who owns the stock and actually pays attention to the financial statements (i.e., you didn't buy it at $140/share and are stuck with it now) can research this?
Also pay attention to their HUGE debt. Poor debt management can kill a company, like KMart which filed bankruptcy today.
Although I don't like Amazon because of the patents and the fact that Jeff Bezos is a clown (okay a little ad-hominem there, but making him man of the year was an embarrasment to Time magazine if you ask me), I'd hope they succeed because I love reading their great reviews before buying CDs and books from Barnes and Noble. :-)
See this cartoon.
Three years later...
what's all this 1c malarky? nyse.com and nasdaq.com both list Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN at $12.60 per share. it hasn't been under $1 since Q3 1997.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
If you read this article from the Seattle Times, it talks of Amazon.com's method of 'pro forma' accounting, which seems to be a pretty convenient way to hide expenses from the bottom line.
I'm happy for the supposed turn for the better Amazon.com is experiencing, as much as I am for any bellweather Dot.Com. I'm just not sure I'd want to invest in them personally.
Like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, etc. in the tech arena (proven track records, good accumulation of values and dividends).
Face it -- No Linux stock belongs in a retirement fund yet. Redhat is speculative as are many tech companies in general. The three "blue chip" tech's listed above are proven companies -- you may not double your money in the next year but you won't loose it all most likely either.
Frankly, Gates could pluck a few billion from his pocket change, buy Amazon, and have a MAJOR strangehold over much of the commercial world. Not only that, but he gets tons of customer data for Passport.
While Microsoft doesn't appear to want to get into the retail market what-so-ever, Amazon would make a great outlet for their gear.
mogorific carpentry experiments
You guys should get out and see some live stand-up.
Hey, I've got one!
"I guess pigs must have wings now. Yuk-yuk-yuk."
Transistors and Beer!!
...is RH also post real earnings. ("real" == GAAP, not pro forma.) I suspect that will take a lot longer, though, considering their business model.
Bringing in Arthur Andersen to do the books was the best thing Amazon could have done.
actually, this jew is happy, and drunk for that matter
I read the strangest headlines today:
This feels like one of those "parallel universe/time travel" episodes they used to have on Superfriends!
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Well, yeah - I basically agree with you.
I've been into computers long before the Internet became popular, and I've invested far too much time and effort in this field to just give up on it because of a digital version of the California gold rush.
As long as those of us truly interested in and dedicated to I.T. stick out these "knee-jerk reaction" times, I think things will get back on track sooner, rather than later.
It's the big investors who got burned on the dot-com fiasco, so of course they're the ones out there now proclaiming that "The new economy didn't exist!" and "The next 10 years of the stock market will be driven by industry, brick-and-mortar stores, and traditional service providers." In their minds, it's the only outcome they're comfortable seeing.
The fact is, the Internet is growing up. We're quickly moving from the "wild, wild west" of Cyberspace to a more governed and commercialized space, where the "real world" reaches out and hangs a virtual hat. This also means that after the fallout from the craziness ends, we probably won't see fast growth like we used to see. Instead, we'll see small profits here and there, and a lot of failed commercial sites - paralleling the real business world.
Although I used to criticize Amazon.com for "dabbling" too much (seemed like Bezos wanted to sell everything under the sun, until of course, a particular item didn't pan out so well for him), I think his persistence at selling his core line of products (books and media) is starting to pan out.
I don't wonder at all. For one thing, eBay is the equivalent of a virtual world-wide garage sale/discount goods expo. It's exactly the type of shopping people want to do most when the economy is depressed.
(If you're making lots of cash, you don't want to settle for someone's used stuff. When money is tight or future money is unsure, those cheaper used items start to look like real good options.)
As for other sites like Amazon not benefiting like eBay is - that's really a no-brainer too.
eBay got into the game "early and often". They attained a critical mass of regular buyers and sellers. For a while, I used both eBay and Amazon auctions - but I gave up on Amazon auctions as they just weren't worth my listing fees anymore. (For every 1 item I'd successfully sell there, I'd sell 3 or 4 on eBay - and usually for higher bids.) You have to go where the "eyeballs" are when you want to sell. That starts a chain reaction, since the buyers want to go where the most items are to bid on.
Amazon never really pushed hard enough to win back the users migrating to eBay auctions. I think they had (maybe still have?) a chance to do it because they're another well-recognized Internet name. They'd need to take a loss for a while though, like offer all listings free for 9 months or so, and advertise it in magazines, etc.
Then, they'd also have to ensure they offered every single feature eBay does (dutch auctions, non-paying bidder alerts, easy online payment system, etc. etc.) if they want to keep those people.
...for the first time in 6 years. Somethiing must really be up!
2002-01-22 16:04:18 Amazon.com Turns a Profit! (articles,news) (rejected)
Make the submission queue a wiki for God's sake. 100,000 readers and you fucks can't be bothered with journalistic integrity of any kind.
[o]_O
In the Amazon Rain Forest Money Grows On Trees
The only difference between Amazon and Enron is that Amazon's debts are actually on the books.
-ted
No cookies, no java, no javascript. A very graceful, responsive, hasslefree site that beats yahoo.com or slashdot.org hands down. Can't compare it with Amazon's, though, since I never visit that company out of principle (patents, privacy).
Marko
...kindly ask that the folks at Amazon turn the thermostat back up.
Were Anderson the auditors ? :) *(oops)*
OK, let's review:
Spent $13 billion
Got a few warehouses, a web site, and "first mover advantage" in what is going to be a low margin business, one day soon.
At 1 cent per $12 share, that's a return on equity of 0.08%, or about 0.32% annualized.
Now to compensate for the volatility risk of this thing, one might hope for earnings of what? 15%? Ridiculously low, but interest rates are low. That'd be about $250MM/q, or a cool billion a year, in nice round numbers. Achievable? Maybe.
To make that return back when the stock was $100 would have required profits of $8bbn/year. What were they thinking?
Looking back, Bezos could have bought the entire publishing industry, built his damn website, and been in a high margin business. Too bad he didn't have the vision for it.
I know Amazon is trying to turn into a retailer-perhaps Walmart.NET or something, but let's focus on its core business-books. It does a good job there. It's changed buying habits all over the world. I mean, how many times have you guys gone online to see how well a book is reviewed? Granted, the system isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than reading the inside jacket (like I used to do before the NET).
I don't know if Amazon is going to change the world as a retailer, but it has changed the way everyone buys books. Even if you don't buy directly from Amazon, people will often look at the online reviews and than going check out the book in more detail at B&N or Borders.
I believe software is somewhat the same-though I generally don't buy a lot of MS stuff, when I do I check the reviews at Amazon. These are the sort of things where Amazon has developed a really good business model.
If it every does go bankrupt, I expect that they'll just shed all the extra stuff and pair back to light and information oriented items like books and software, they can always make money and they already have volume.
NO gods, NO governments, NO [OPTION]....
Myself I wouldn't complain at making a profit of a megre $1,000.
"We were able to make significant savings in the software procurement department after we fired the guy who had been sneaking NT boxes into our cluster", said a source at Slashdot earlier today.
The CEO of Slashdot is also known to receive a large bonus, as a proportion of the company's profits, and stock options in OSDN.
Things have not always been plain sailing however. A quick net search reveals that the security has been compromised, and that the entire source code used for Slashdot is available on the internet.
Whether or not any dividend will be paid has yet to be determined.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
At least they haven't all brought out their Uzis, like I hear is standard practice in the US.
Five million per quarter isn't going to cut it.
In the eyes of the law, Amazon is headquartered in Delaware. For the rest of us, they are headquartered in Seattle, but not downtown. They moved to Beacon Hill years ago.
At least they haven't all brought out their Uzis, like I hear is standard practice in the US.
Our postal workers are good Americans(tm). When they go postal, they use shotguns, like any True American(tm) would. Uzis are for pussies.
:-)
In all seriousness, the professionalism of our postal workers during the Anthrax scare was nothing short of inspiring, and very surprising given all the bad press (and bad events) that have happened over the years, resulting in the phrase "going postal" becoming equivelent to "running amok." A lot of us (myself included) would probably not be inclined to stay at their job and continue working day in and day out with that sort of direct threat hanging over our heads, yet these folks did so, for weeks on end, without missing a beat (at least here in Chicago).
Still, it seems to be more fun to joke about postal workers running amok than high school students, probably because the latter tend to do it a lot more often these days, and not least because we (especially we Americans) love to take the piss out of anyone in uniform.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ok, to everyone who is moaning about the 1-click patent, let's get something straight: If Amazon hadn't come up with it, I doubt anyone here would have.
Yes, yes, I realize that the technical way to do it is painfully obvious. But according to Alan Cooper in "The Inmates are Running the Asylum", Bezos and the designers had to drag the programmers kicking and screaming into writing the code to do it. Why? Because the programmers wanted to give the user a confirmation screen, and effectively make it 2-click shopping.
Face it, Bezos and his designers were thinking outside the box, and the rest of us are just pissed that we couldn't see something so obvious.
i'm not saying it isn't true ... i'm just saying that they haven't filed these numbers with the SEC yet ...
http://knobias.10kwizard.com/files.php?sym=amzn
until they do file with the SEC, i wouldn't trust the rumor for crap. with some companies (*cough* Enron *cough*), i wouldn't even trust the numbers AFTER they filed with the SEC.
lets face it. last year, Amazon had a loss of $1 billion (yes, timmy, thats with a 'B'). this year, they claim a profit? call me a skeptic, but i think somebody had a crash course in Creative Accounting.
We rely on auditors to make sure the numbers jibe, but after Enron, I am starting to question everything that I read
;) is the only thing that will reassure the market that the numbers it relies upon are accurate.
This is why the normally hyper-pro business commentater Larry Kudlow advocates lynching the executives of Enron and Arther Anderson. Their high profile and massive fraud casts doubt on everybodies numbers. If you doubt the validity of those numbers you are not going to get into the market. A public execution (and I'm not too sure Larry was speaking figuritively
I don't think Bill Gates would buy Amazon. Because they just migrated onto Linux, he would either face a new loss in migrating over to MS technologies, or he would have to live with owning a company saving cost by using Open Source software.
It's basically a lose-lose situation for Bill Gates.
For IBM, it could be interesting to invest in/run Amazon. They are putting a lot of effort and resources into Linux, and it would be nice to show to the world how Linux can be a good foundation for a profitable business.
I doubt they will actually run it, but perhaps they could offer to deal with the technical stuff? It could certainly be valuable experience for all parties.
Stop the brainwash
First off, the word is principal , not principle, when one is speaking of amortizing a loan. Second, ValueLine shows the total outstanding LT debt of the company as 2.1 billion, which is a far cry from 3 billion. Lastly, you have no idea whether the princip AL is being addressed or not - this has nothing to do with the profitability of the firm, and everything to do with the loan covenants. If the covenants were not being met, the debtors would have the right to call the loans and send the company to bankruptcy court. In fact, the truth is just the opposite - I call your attention to the company's SEC 10-Q filing, which contains a balance sheet item "Current Portion of Long-Term Debt", indicating that in July of this year, at least 18 million of the non-interest liability on LT debt was due in the next 3 months.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
And I guess all the folks who work at Amazon count for nothing, huh?
P.S. Did you compose your response on a stone tablet and use a mule train to deliver it to /.?
Now. Would you please go look up the terms of the other (much larger) bond issues, and report back?
Five million still doesn't cut it.
But borrowing 2 billion to pay off CCC bonds that are trading at a greater than 50% discount? Get real. That means that for less than half the cash, you could instead buy their debt, and own the company when they file ch11. Would you give them the money under those circumstances?
from 1998..any follow up of results from a judgement? All I see is one company saying another is hurting our business..But either way more info is good so thanks :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?