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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.
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
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/
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
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?" `":" #");}
[DISCLAIMER: I own Amazon stock, and I still believe that a company that provides good customer services can't be bad, so I'm holding onto it]
Agreed.
As much as I hate about their one-click patent, Amazon is best place for books and other stuffs. Their recommendation feature is excellent. I found out a lot of authors that I would have known otherwise. And the service is first class. If only other companies would care so much about service quality too....
Sure, Amazon has been losing tons of money, but you have to give credit to the company for very good forcast of their target. They have been very good at being on the mark in the past.
Now, if Jeff Bezos commits to more consistent customer privacy policy, I would be a really happy customer (and shareholder too).
All it took was some good old common sense. Stop spending money you don't have. Price-cut, but don't price-cut to the point that you knock your company out. Lay off the cheap sock-puppet gimmicks.
The analysts are wrong: it is a new economy. It's just that the same old rules still apply.
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?
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.
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.
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.