Goodnight Amazon: World’s Most Overhyped Retailer Misses Top and Bottom Line
by Zero Hedge - January 27th, 2011 4:07 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
All one can say is oops. That margin compression sure does suck:
- Q4 EPS USD 0.91 vs. Exp. USD 0.88
- Q4 net sales USD 12.95bln vs. Exp. USD 13.03bln
- Net sales are expected to be between $9.1 billion and $9.9 billion, or to grow between 28% and 39% compared with first quarter 2010
- Operating income is expected to be between $260 million and $385 million
We have yet to see snow being blamed for the After Hour stock collapse
Full release:
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2010.
Operating cash flow increased 6% to $3.50 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $3.29billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2009. Free cash flow decreased 14% to $2.52 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $2.92 billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2009.
Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 465 million on December 31, 2010, compared with 461 million a year ago.
Net sales increased 36% to $12.95 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $9.52 billion in fourth quarter 2009. Excluding the $139 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 37% compared with fourth quarter 2009.
Operating income was $474 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $476 million in fourth quarter 2009. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $18 million.
Net income increased 8% to $416 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.91 per diluted share, compared with net income of $384 million, or $0.85 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2009.
"Thanks to our customers, we achieved two big milestones," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "We had our first $10 billion quarter, and after selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com. Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected – and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales."
Full Year 2010
Net sales increased 40% to…
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There Goes Those Fancy eBook Aspirations from Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon: 100,000’s of FREE eBooks from the Public Library
by ilene - August 11th, 2010 2:49 pm
There Goes Those Fancy eBook Aspirations from Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon: 100,000’s of FREE eBooks from the Public Library
Courtesy of Reggie Middleton, writing at Zero Hedge
Sometimes the best laid plans can be put out to pasture due to a lack of foresight in regards to the ever changing, liquid landscape known as the Internet. What fascinates me so much about the Web is that it is the great democratizer, it brings down the barriers to entry and allows for unfettered information flow. For instance, who would have thought that your local public library could lay low the massive aspirations media and retail titans such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple? Put simply, why would you buy an eReader from these vendors for several hundred dollars, then go ahead and spend more money buying the eBooks for said reader when you can simply download the books from your local public library’s website into the equipment you already have? Okay, I know why those Apple heads would do it – because they want to spend money on Apple products,,, the eBooks may look cooler with that shiny Apple logo-thingy indicating that you too have donated unnecessarily to the Steve Jobs’ enrichment fund, but how about the rest of the vendors???
As a matter of fact, you can kill several birds with one stone simply by buying one of the recent Android phones. Google is really on to something here, and the growth potential of Android is simply phenomenal. When those Android tablets get moving at Kmart for $100… Whoops, there goes that Amazon Digital eBook business model.
Attention Kmart shoppers: $149 Android tablet on aisle 5 : The Android OS isn’t just powering high end smartphones, it also runs barebones tablets sold at Kmart for the price of an iPod nano.
Think about this! Hundreds of thousands of titles freely and legally downloadable from your local public library to play on your $150 tablet with standard ports, HD video, the whole 9 yards, or maybe just on your cell phone. Android can scale pretty high in the capability department and reach rather low in the price category as well.
NY’ers, check this out from your NYC Public Libraries:
These books use DRM protection administered by Overdrive. Guess what platforms they won’t play on (okay, I’ll spoil it for you – the two front runners in the…
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It Would Sell Itself If They Had Just Called It “Nookie”
by ilene - July 30th, 2010 4:45 pm
TLP: It Would Sell Itself If They Had Just Called It "Nookie"
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
And B&N is making its play by both going old school and looking ahead.
NYT:
In September, the chain will begin an aggressive promotion of its Nook e-readers by building 1,000-square-foot boutiques in all of its stores, with sample Nooks, demonstration tables, video screens and employees who will give customers advice and operating instructions.
By devoting more floor space to promoting the Nook, Barnes & Noble is playing up what it calls a crucial advantage over Amazon in the e-reader war: its 720 bricks-and-mortar stores, where customers can test out the device before they commit to buying it.
“I think that’s everything,” William Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in an interview. “American consumers want to try and hold gadgets before they purchase them.”
Amazon’s Kindle e-reader is for sale on Amazon.com and in Target and HMSHost stores.
Barnes & Noble has already installed small counters in its stores where customers can test out the Nook. The new display space would be much larger, and it would be located next to each store’s cafe, to encourage customers to stop by the Nook space, coffee or tea in hand.
Points for placement, B&N. And points for foresight in making room for the expanded Nook boutiques by clearing out some of the CD bins. (Can you remember the last time you bought a CD?) Pretty soon, B&N will be thinking about moving all the music online.
Just like, uh, Amazon.
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DARK HORSE HEDGE UPDATE
by ilene - July 23rd, 2010 3:38 am
DARK HORSE HEDGE UPDATE
By Scott at Sabrient and Ilene of PSW
You can run, you can run, tell my friend-boy, Willie Brown.
You can run, tell my friend-boy, Willie Brown.
Lord, that I’m standin’ at the crossroad, babe,
I believe I’m sinking down.- Crossroads, Robert Johnson
Heading into Friday July 23, 2010 the market is again at a technical crossroad with the SPX closing Thursday at 1093.7, above the 50-day Moving Average of 1085.5. The MACD 12-26-9 remains close but still under the (zero) signal line at -1.13, with the RSI 14-day at 45.26. There is lateral resistance at the 1096 level from the close last Thursday showing how the market has traveled a long way the past week to get nowhere.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) fell short of analysts’ forecasts after Thursday’s close and was down 14% in after-hours trading, suggesting that the market may follow the pattern it has been in most of the summer.
Up 200, down 200, up 200, down 200 - wash out your savings, rinse and repeat! What a total sham of a market we have these days with machines running us up and down on virtually no news at all. Yesterday they would have you believe that Ben Bernanke caused a sell-off. How ridiculous is that? He didn’t say one thing that he didn’t already say in the Fed Minutes that were released on the 14th, which were the notes from the meeting of June 23rd so for analysts to get on TV and say “the markets were concerned by the Chairman’s comments” is beyond stupid – it’s criminal negligence. Phil’s Thrill-Ride Thursday.
[chart from freestockchart.com]
Thursday’s economic releases were less than encouraging with a jump in the number of people seeking unemployment benefits. Sales of previously owned homes fell, but the market shrugged it off as seasonal and rallied on the earnings of Caterpillar Inc., UPS Inc., and others that beat estimates. However, the SPX hasn’t been able to break through resistance at 1096 and essentially has gone nowhere since last Thursday.…
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The Danger of Earnings Season Extrapolation
by ilene - October 28th, 2009 8:07 pm
The Danger of Earnings Season Extrapolation
Gulliver and the Lilliputions
Yes, we all get excited when an Amazon.com scorches their earnings forecast or when an Apple Inc. Suge Knights the whole sell-side with a massive beat, but should that enthusiasm really spread to other stocks?
One of the dangers of extrapolating the good earnings reports out of Apple, Amazon or Intel is that in reality, these three companies have no real competitors. I know they pretend they do (or even imagine they do), but trust me, they don’t. Let’s take them one by one.
Apple Inc. (AAPL)
Apple has a monopoly – on Apple products! They don’t compete with Dell for the simple reason that Dell doesn’t sell iPhones or Mac laptops, they only sell Dell stuff. Hewlett-Packard, while a great company in their own right, also doesn’t sell iPods or own the world’s most important music store (iTunes).
Apple is a de facto monopoly and so their results are only very indirectly meaningful to the sellers of any other personal technology products. In fact, their success can be downright detrimental to the results of others (go ask Nokia or whatever jackass is working on the next iteration of the Microsoft Zune).
Amazon.com (AMZN)
The Buffetts of the world prefer owning companies that have a wide moat, meaning they have a barrier against other companies who would look to compete. Amazon has moat that is filled, not unlike its titular river, with enough piranhas to eat any pretender alive who dares to set up shop. Oh, and the piranhas in Amazon’s moat are armed to the teeth and carry an especially lethal venom containing a mixture of swine flu, asbestos and arsenic.
There’s a digital graveyard somewhere in Silicon Valley filled with the remains of such pretenders, like eToys, Buy.com, CDNow and anyone else still hanging around. And don’t get me started on Barnes and Noble, I buy and read 50 or 60 books a year and I still don’t even know their e-store’s URL.
Intel (INTC)
Referring to AMD versus Intel as a David and Goliath situation is being way too generous. In actuality, Intel’s Goliath is really battling David’s pet poodle, named Pumpernickel. AMD has been nipping at Intel’s ankles for as long as I’ve been in the business, to
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NASDAQ Win Streak Will Crash To A Halt
by ilene - July 23rd, 2009 10:25 pm
Click here for a FREE, 90-day trail subscription to our PSW Report!
NASDAQ Win Streak Will Crash To A Halt (MSFT, AMZN)
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock
Well, we don’t know for sure that the NASDAQ’s winning streak will come to an end… but when you have Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) both tanking after hours on disappointing earnings reports, you kind of know tomorrow is going to be a down day.
Microsoft, in particular, missed by a mile and since they’re still so huge, that itself could doom the NASDAQ right there.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site