Amazon's Announcement
Here's my discussion with Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg's Money Moves earlier today about what to expect out of today's Amazon announcement:
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Amazon Deal ‘Final Straw’ for Netflix
My appearance on CNBC today discussing $AMZN $NFLX $CSTR $VZ
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Why Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon All Should Have IPO'ed Two Years Ago Instead of Waiting
Unlike the experts who believe Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon should have waited to IPO, I think the companies' rocky results as a public company show they should have gone public much sooner than they did.
Read the full Forbes post
Friday, March 30, 2012
Amazon May Be a Potential RIM Buyer, Jackson Says
Eric Jackson, president and founder of Ironfire Capital LLC, talks about the outlook for Research In Motion Ltd. and the company's stock. Jackson speaks with Betty Liu and Sheila Dharmarajan on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
[No positions]
Likely Buyers for RIM? Amazon and Microsoft/Nokia
RIM (RIMM) now has the fear of the God in them it seems.
That’s good, although they’ve still got a tough road ahead of them — especially with a lot of their leadership walking out the door.
What’s juiced the stock this morning is that investors think there’s a glimmer of hope the board might consider a full buyout of the Canadian company.
Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The Two Companies on Facebook's Menu After IPO: Nokia and Yahoo!
Facebook needs to bulk up to kill Google. Once they go public, watch for them to seriously consider buying Nokia or Yahoo! -- with a little help from their big brother Microsoft.
Read the full post on Forbes.
Friday, January 13, 2012
No Wonder Hulu Couldn't Sell Itself
Hulu tried to pump up its 2011 results in a blog post yesterday. They're not very exciting.
Read the full Forbes post
Monday, January 02, 2012
The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives
If you exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to stamp them out from your repertoire. If your boss or several senior executives at your company exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to start looking for a new job.
Read the full post on Forbes
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Difference Between a Tech "Greenfield Gorilla" and a "Nichey Nancy"
Is Your Tech Company a Greenfield Gorilla or a Nichey Nancy?
Read the full Forbes Post
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla
If you're building a company today, here are 6 things Jeff Bezos knew back in 1997 that made Amazon (and will make you) so successful.
Read the full post in Forbes
Friday, November 11, 2011
What Is Next For Apple's iAd?
Apple has to decide whether it wants to play in the ad world or not. Eddy Cue will now make that decision.
Read the full Forbes post.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Will You Shut Up About This Being Another Internet Bubble Already?
Another Internet Bubble is not about to collapse. We have a few more years still. So party like it's 1996.
Read my full post at Forbes here.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Video: Google's Strategy: China Watch
NEW YORK (TheStreet) - Contributor Eric Jackson details Google's actions in regards to China and how its relations with the country stands to impact the stock.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Dangdang Must Step Up
By Eric Jackson It debuted with great fanfare in an initial public offering last December. The stock priced at $16 a share, which was considered high, opened at $24 and quickly went to the $30 range, closing at a high above $34 in mid-January. Since then, the stock has steadily been returning to its initial trading levels. Yesterday, it released its first earnings report since going public. As usual with these Chinese stocks, it takes time for the market to digest the news contained in the results. The initial reaction was positive. The stock traded up in the premarket to almost $27 after closing the prior day under $26. But it immediately started selling off yesterday and hasn't stopped yet. Today, the stock is currently trading under $23, down nearly 7%. So what happened in the earnings report? The e-commerce site, which still makes the majority of its money selling books, revealed that its net revenue for the fourth quarter was up 58% year-over-year to $108 million and its full-year revenue also grew 57% to $346 million. They also boasted in their earnings call that non-book revenue grew 150%. They aim to reposition themselves -- much like Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Trade Now) did 10 years ago -- by selling a variety of goods via e-commerce rather than just books, which tend to be lower-margin sales. General merchandise revenues in 2010 were up 156% to $59.4 million from the previous year. Yet, the scale of those general merchandise sales -- only 17% of overall sales -- shows that Dangdang still has a way to go to credibly saying it's no longer just a bookseller. Its first-quarter guidance indicated that net revenue would be between $102.4 million and $103.6 million, representing a 50% increase year over year. That was in line with estimates. [*** This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required. ***]
RealMoney Contributor
3/10/2011 1:45 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
What happened to E-Commerce China Dangdang (DANG - commentary - Trade Now)?
Monday, December 20, 2010
Dangdang Gets Double-Teamed in Price War
By Eric Jackson For example, over the last week, Dangdang has been attacked by two companies that want to enter into a price war with it. It's not surprising. After all, Dangdang is in the middle of its first quarter as a public company. All newly public companies like to come out of the gate strong during their first earnings call. Their competitors know that this success can start to feed on itself with investors and consumers alike. Therefore, why not try to short-circuit that positive feedback loop with a negative one? In other words, by entering in to a price war, competitors can make it appear that the new IPO is stumbling in its first earnings call, which can seed fear and doubt among investors and consumers. This, in turn, might position the competitors as "more successful." At the moment, Dangdang is being attacked by private Chinese company 360buy and American juggernaut Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Trade Now). 360buy (also known as Jingdong Mall) recently announced that it would spend RMB 80 million (approximately $12 million) on discounting prices prior to the peak holiday shopping season. This came after 360buy said a week ago that it would drop prices on its books by 20% in order to win business.
RealMoney Contributor
12/20/2010 5:00 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
China-based bookseller Dangdang (DANG - commentary - Trade Now) will go down in history as having one of the most successful IPOs of 2010. The company raised just under $300 million, was priced at $16 per share, opened at $24 per share and hasn't looked back. The stock topped out as high as $34 per share a couple of days after the Dec. 7 IPO, but it has since fallen significantly from that level. Still, shares of Dangdang are trading above their initial post-IPO level, giving investors who partook in the IPO a nice return.
Although TD Ameritrade recently said that Dangdang is one of the three most traded stocks at the moment (the others are Youku (YOKY - commentary - Trade Now) and Baidu (BIDU - commentary - Trade Now)), it's amazing to me that there is not more information about the company readily available in the U.S.
Dangdang Price War
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 - Eric Jackson
Contributor Eric Jackson says recent Chinese IPO Dangdang has been attacked by 2 competitors within the last week on pricing into the holiday season. But why hasn't any of the American business media covered it?
Monday, December 13, 2010
Chinese IPOs and the Value Investor
By Eric Jackson However, the inevitable backlash started to come against both companies. Most of the critics of both companies are Bill Miller-esque raging value fundamentalists. Speaking about Youku, you often hear the complaint, "How can a company that had $35 million in revenue in the first nine months of the year and lost money be worth $5 billion?" (That was Friday. It's worth less today, but you get the point.) I consider myself a value investor at heart. How can you not like the idea of picking up something for 50 cents when all indications are that it's worth a buck? And I certainly believe that the market is not always efficient or rational, thereby giving investors many opportunities to pick up something that has been temporarily thrown into the discount bin. At the same time, I've never been good at investing on the basis of momentum or trading the technicals of a chart. Many people do it every day and swear by it. But that's just not me. However, speaking as a "value guy," I get a little sick at the self-righteousness of some value investors and their criticisms of these Chinese IPOs. The simple truth is that any pure value investor missed Amazon.com(AMZN - commentary - Trade Now) after its IPO and for the last 13 years since. I don't think there's ever been a time during that stretch -- even post-Lehman -- when a value investor would have been said to get into Amazon. Yet it's been a great investment over that period.
RealMoney Contributor
12/13/2010 5:01 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
A week ago, I think it's fair to say that 99% of investors and probably 99.5% of the media weren't paying attention to the fact that Youku (YOKU - commentary - Trade Now) or Dangdang (DANG - commentary -Trade Now) were going public.
However, after these stocks immediately jumped over 160% and 80% in value on their first day of trading on Wednesday, people sat up and took notice. Then, as their prices kept going up on Thursday and Friday morning, people's jaws started to really drop.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Rip-Roaring China IPOs
By Eric Jackson Dangdang ended its first day of trading up 87%. Youku ended up 161% for the day. It feels like 1999 all over again. However, any time you see moves like that, you will get the chorus of worriers. "These price-to-sales ratios are crazy!" is one comment I heard during yesterday's market action. "This is going to end in tears!" One more: "I'm going to short the hell out of these two stocks." I wrote about Youku being the monster China IPO two weeks ago, though I'm not some Pollyanna cheerleader. Still, even I was surprised by the giant move the stock made yesterday. The critics of Youku point out that the company has raised more than $100 million from venture capitalists to date, and that it has yet to turn a profit. In fact, Youku's losses have only grown along with the company itself. It has faced increasing costs of acquiring proprietary content (think Hulu), keeping up with intense competition, paying for more servers to stream video and large pirating risks. Even if the company can supplement its advertising-based revenue with subscription revenue, critics wonder how will it will convince the Chinese to pay for content when bootleg DVDs can be bought for pennies on the street. Yet, what Youku has going for it -- as I've said before -- is that it's the leader in the online video space at the moment. China's No. 2 online-video company, Tudou, filed to go public first, but Youku is actually the first one out. If it didn't have name recognition in the U.S. before yesterday, it does now. That will be important for Youku's continued access to the capital markets in order to fund its growth -- assuming its price holds up.
RealMoney Contributor
12/9/2010 11:30 AM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
Wednesday's price action in the new Chinese initial public offerings in Youku (YOKU -commentary - Trade Now) and Dangdang (DANG- commentary - Trade Now) was eye-popping. Americans love easy comparisons to for understanding foreign businesses, so we've heard endlessly heard that Youku and Dangdang are China's YouTube and Amazon (AMZN -commentary - Trade Now), respectively.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Netflix: Love the Product, Love the Stock
By Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
6/17/2010 1:30 PM EDT
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
I'm in love with the Netflix (NFLX - commentary -Trade Now) product. I know very few customers who don't. Most of the stock jockeys who chat about whether Netflix is a buy, sell, or hold seem to get disconnected from the actual service that is the basis for the stock's price.
What's not to like about being a Netflix customer? It's cheap on the monthly subscription fee considering how many movies I'll rent in a month. It's also efficient. The DVDs typically arrive a day after I order them -- via regular mail. I had a problem once in the last two years of using the service, and the company's customer service was great.
And as much as I enjoy the traditional discs-in-envelopes business, I am an even bigger fan of the Netflix on demand service that I use through my TiVo (TIVO - commentary - Trade Now) service. The service is quick. Downloads appear to be quicker than those from the traditional cable company on-demand services. Even the Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Trade Now) on-demand movies that I can get through my TiVo appears to be slower.
The Netflix on-demand service -- which of course is the future for this company -- is quick and easy. It has the best interface I've seen of presenting possible movie choices to you and learning from your history of selections. It's a smarter service -- and it gets smarter as more subscribers use it. Netflix is in a good position to keep doing well in this business even after the mail-order business is gone.
My biggest complaint against Netflix's on-demand service is that the company still has a relatively small catalog of titles, considering this is one of the industry leaders. Hopefully, with more cash in the bank and a bigger user base, the company will be able to change situation this soon with the Hollywood powers-that-be.
....
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Amazon.com Battles Crony Capitalism
By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor 
03/10/10 - 06:00 AM EST
Stock quotes in this article: AMZN , BKS , BGP , BAM
Last week, Amazon.com(AMZN) announced that it would try to enhance its service in Canada through Amazon.ca by expanding its distribution centers within the country.
Chapters Indigo, the No. 1 bricks-and-mortar bookseller chain in Canada, has cried foul to the Canadian government, appealing to an obscure law that any distribution center in Canada needs to owned by a majority of Canadians.
Chapters Indigo is the top online competitor against Amazon in Canada. The same products sold on Amazon.ca are up to 40% more than the ones sold on Amazon.com. An increased cost of doing business in Canada for Amazon from a less efficient distribution means that Chapters Indigo can keep its margins up at the expense of consumers.
But there is a much longer back story to this relationship than just this latest scuffle about distribution centers. It goes to the heart of how governmental regulation -- whether in Canada or elsewhere -- can be capricious and work against the interest of consumers and in favor of those with the money and access to power to shape it for its own ends.
Chapters Indigo, a national bookseller chain, is no different from Barnes & Noble(BKS), Borders(BGP), or Books-A-Million(BAM). It's the result of a merger of two old chains -- Chapters and Indigo -- that struggled with profitability. The old head of Indigo, Heather Reisman, became the new head of Chapters Indigo.
Why aren't any of the big American booksellers in Canada? They have never been allowed to enter the market. Back in the late 1990s, when the super-store bookseller chain idea emerged and Chapters and Indigo both were founded, the two Canadian chains appealed to the Liberal federal government to block American companies like Barnes & Noble and Borders from entering the market.
Their argument went that Canadian literature, opinion, and news coverage was culturally unique and deserved to be protected by the Canadian government. The large American chains had much more capital. In a true free market system, they would have been allowed to enter the market and sell their wares. With more capital, presumably they would have undercut the Canadian booksellers until the big ones had suffered enormous losses and been forced to withdraw from the market, leaving the American firms with a stranglehold on the Canadian bookselling market.
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