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Posted
Jun 23 2008, 12:15 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Four tech companies land on Seeking Alpha's "Six screaming stock buys with hidden gems" report: Amazon, Apple, Google and eBay. I agree that each company has its "hidden gem," but not sure that every gem makes its owner a screaming buy. YouTube is a gem within Google, but it doesn't collect much revenue and Google hasn't figured out how to monetize it. Amazon has never disclosed Kindle sales figures, so we don't know how the device is affecting the company's finances.
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Posted
Apr 03 2008, 12:32 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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Apple has become the top music seller in the U.S. The company made the announcement today after Ars Technica leaked an internal e-mail with details. Just a couple of months ago, Apple passed Best Buy to become the #2 music retailer. Now, the company is topping the charts.
Apple had 19% of the market in January, and Wal-Mart was in second place with 15%, according to the leaked e-mail. It's worth noting an obvious difference between the two: Apple is an all-digital music seller, while most of Wal-Mart's sales are physical CDs. Best Buy, Amazon and Target rounded out the top five spots. Some tech blogs thought that January's numbers were skewed due to people redeeming iTunes gift cards recieved over the holidays. But it looks like Apple stayed on top in February as well.
Shares of the company rose nearly 3% today to close at $151.61. Here's what others had to say about the news:
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Posted
Mar 20 2008, 12:05 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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I've been thinking about CEO apologies today after reading the Jeff Bezos note plastered on Amazon's front page. Bezos' contrition stems from the fact that the company sold out of the new Kindle electronic book reader in 5.5 hours, and it has been scrambling to increase production ever since. Some customers have waited six weeks to get one. Soon, Bezos said, Amazon will start shipping Kindles to people the same day they order them. "We had high hopes for Kindle before its launch," Bezos wrote, "but we didn't expect the demand that actually materialized." This wasn't exactly an apology -- Bezos never said he was sorry -- but it did have a "we screwed up" tone. And yet it smacked of product promotion -- it was another opportunity to advertise the Kindle to everyone who visits Amazon today. Amazon shares rose more than 4% today to $73.25.
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Posted
Jan 31 2008, 12:22 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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Amazon is buying audio book seller Audible.com for $300 million. That, and the release of the Kindle e-book reader, gives a pretty good picture of where the e-commerce giant wants to go in terms of online content. And it sets the stage for an interesting rivalry between Amazon and Apple. Amazon shares rose nearly 5% to close at $77.70 today, reversing a month-long trend. Shares are down about 20% from the first of the year. A few numbers about today's news: Amazon is paying $11.50 per share for Audible -- a 24% premium over yesterday's close. In buying the company Amazon will add at least another $110 million in annual revenue. Audible has strong revenue growth -- 2007 sales rose nearly 30% over 2006, due in part to strong distribution through Apple's iTunes store -- but the company wasnt profitable. (Though to be fair, its net loss in Q3 was only $200,000).
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Posted
Dec 27 2007, 07:23 AM
by
Kim Peterson
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Apple is finally going to offer digital movie rentals from its iTunes store, the FT reports. The company has hooked up with News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox to allow short-term rental downloads of Fox DVDs. Apple hasn't officially confirmed the news or said anything about potential pricing, which is rumored to be about $3 per rental. Apple sells movies for download, but to this point hasn't made anything available to rent. So far, the downloadable rental business has been pretty abysmal, with rivals like Movielink and CinemaNow unable to turn big numbers. But the opportunities are there, and Amazon and others have been working hard to come up with a groundbreaking rental service. Enter Apple and it's not-so-secret weapon: the iPod (and now the iPhone). I'm assuming Apple will make it easy to shoot movies from your computer to your iPod. If that's the case -- and if Apple shines its marketing megaspotlight on the feature -- iTunes rentals could be huge. The next step might be enabling the downloading directly to an iPod over WiFi, but that could take hours.
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Posted
Dec 16 2007, 02:30 PM
by
Douglas McIntyre
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It is hard to find stocks that could double in a fairly short period of time. It rarely happens with shares in really big companies. There are exceptions like Apple and Amazon. But, most stocks that make big moves are smaller, and, they are often shares that have had a big fall.
For a stock to double over a few quarters it needs a catalyst of amazing earnings, a big customer win, a break-up or a buy-out. At 24/7 Wall St. we went through hundreds of companies to find ones with shares that could double. Each firm had to be matched with one or more compelling reasons to create a significant spike.
We came up with the list, and if you want to get greater detail on the analysis you can see it here.
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Posted
Nov 09 2007, 12:12 PM
by
Robert Walberg
I'm sure you've heard the phrase the best offense is a good defense, well given the offensive nature of the market over the past month -- the DJIA, S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices are down by 8.4%, 6.7% and 7.0%, respectively -- it might just be time to adopt a more defensive posture with your portfolio. How do we reduce risk, while maintaining exposure to the market? Simple, we lower our portfolio's beta.
As defined on the Investopedia web site, beta measures a stock's volatility in relation to the market. By definition, the market (the S&P 500) has a beta of 1.0, and individual stocks are ranked according to how much they deviate from the market. A stock that swings more than the market over time has a beta above 1.0. If a stock moves less than the market, the stock's beta is less than 1.0. When the market is racing to new highs, we want stocks with high betas that will outperform, but when the opposite is true -- as is the case now -- we want stocks that either move down slower than the overall market or, better yet, move in the opposite direction.
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Posted
Sep 25 2007, 01:02 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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Finally, a major retailer figures it out and unveils a music store specializing in MP3s. That's the song format that's blissfully free from those burdensome digital rights restrictions favored by Apple and other companies. You can play MP3s on just about any digital music player or computer. You could make as many CDs of them as you want. You can make copies of them with no problem.
In short, you can do all the things you're supposed to be able to do when you legitimately buy a song. And the music industry is 100% to blame for how screwed up things have become. Shellshocked by the unprecedented file-trading that took place when songs went digital, record labels went on a lawsuit bonanza while putting every song they could into a virtual lockdown (or, as the industry likes to say, managing the song's "rights").
Obviously, Amazon holds a lot of sway with record companies to be able to begin tearing down those walls. And give eMusic credit for doing this too (though I wonder about that company's fate now). Amazon's store only has 2 million songs by 180,000 artists. Some big names are there, such as Kanye West, Pink Floyd and Radiohead, and I imagine the labels that haven't signed on will be closely watching to see how the store fares
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Posted
Sep 19 2007, 10:17 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Now I understand why NBC so publicly pulled its television programs from Apple's iTunes store. The network is taking those programs in-house, launching a Windows-only video-on-demand service in October.
This is a rather bizarre move, considering that it was just a few weeks ago that NBC and News Corp. said they would launch Hulu, a Web video site that will feature NBC shows, among others. Hulu is also supposed to begin private testing in October. What will happen to Hulu now?
Then there's the Amazon part. After dropping iTunes, NBC began offering its programs on Amazon's Unbox service. Seems like NBC is dipping toes in lots of different pools and will go with the one that works best (or brings in the most money).
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