Amazon.com confesses its risks

t byfield tbyfield at panix.com
Thu Jan 6 10:14:05 PST 2000



> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 10:07:12 -0500
> From: "Zack Exley" <zee at ix.netcom.com>


> But in Amazon's case, they're playing down the real maganatude of the the
> "risk". Did you see that stat on Amazon that said they'd have to sell more
> books than have ever been sold in the history of the world to get close to a
> market average p/e? They're best case profit margin is 7% or something
> close to that, according to their own projections.

selling more books in a year than had been sold prior to, say, thirty years ago isn't entirely out of the question these days --not for amazon, granted, but for booksellers en masse. the recent expansion of publishing may very well have brought us surprisingly close to that benchmark. a library at a major re- search university probably holds more books than were made AD 1000-1500, to say nothing of AD 500-1000.

none of which is to suggest that amazon (or its equally kooky ilk) will ever end up stably in the black. it won't; UPS on the other hand...

cheers, t



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