Now that the dust has settled back on our keyboards, which company was the big winner of Cyber Monday? Was it a) Amazon with its new Kindle, b) Wal-Mart with its cheap big-screen TVs, c) Blue Nile with its sparkling diamonds, or d) none of the above?
If you guessed "d" then you are today's winner. While anecdotal evidence suggests that each of the highlighted retailers fared reasonably well on Monday, the real winner of Cyber Monday was FedEx.
Internet sales totalled a whopping $733 million Monday, an impressive 21% jump over the year-ago total. But to jack up sales so significantly at a time when consumer confidence is in the toilet required some serious effort -- and by effort I mean discounting prices. Sales were everywhere online Monday, and that's why I'm not as excited by the retailers as I am by FedEx. You see slashing prices might jumpstart sales, but it does so at the cost of lowering margins. Lower margins mean slow to no profit growth, and it's earnings growth that ultimately drives stock prices.
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