Thursday, January 31, 2008

AMZN Logo

Amazon.com, Inc. (NDAQ: AMZN) continues to impress the street with solid earnings and bullish outlooks. The online retailer posted fourth quarter revenues of $5.67 billion and earnings per share of 48 cents today - beating revenue estimates by analysts. Amazon also issued a surprisingly bullish outlook considering that the street expected the company to issue conservative guidance. Shareholders are hoping that the online retailer can continue stealing market share and work to dominate the ecommerce arena.

Amazon announced that it sees sales of $3.95 billion to $4.15 billion for the first quarter, which is well ahead of street estimates of $3.92 billion. Meanwhile, the company sees operating income for the quarter of $155 million to $200 million, which represents year over year growth of 37% to 38%. Amazon sees its full year sales at $18.75 billion to $19.95 billion compared to street estimates of $18.25 billion. Meanwhile, it sees operating income of $785 million to $985 million. These are all strong numbers that has some investors very bullish on the company.

However, investors pushed the stock down some 11% afterhours on the news as concerns surfaced about the company’s suffering margins. Some investors are concerned that the company may have cut prices in order to achieve sales goals, which is only a temporary solution to a long-term problem. The company needs to find a way to grow without resorting to price cuts or they may be forced to deal with increasingly lower margins on their goods sold. The forecasts also take into account further cuts into margins and have only served to amplify concerns.

Regardless, analysts still remain impressed that the company was able to publish such high numbers and felt that these estimates should be rather conservative. If Amazon is able to pull off another earnings surprise in the fourth quarter, we could see shares move much higher. In the end, it looks like this online retailer is continuing to pull market share from brick-and-mortar competition and increase in dominance in the fast-growing ecommerce marketplace. combined, these factors make AMZN a stock worth watching!

Related Companies
Borders Group, Inc. (BGP)
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS)
Books-A-Million, Inc. (BAMM)

1/31/2008 12:12:36 AM UTC  #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback
2/29/2008 6:28:50 AM UTC
Cool, the post.

Thanks for the information.
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