Long QQQ / Short AMZN

Diffusion

技术面
长线看，已经转入上升趋势


短线看，有可能和11月初的走法相似。测试趋势线也是很好的入点。


基本面
It's Time to Rein In Bezos

It's surprising that shareholders were surprised Amazon.com fell well shy of forecasts of its fourth-quarter revenue. Its CEO has long gotten a pass on margin erosion.

Will Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos ever get summoned to the principal's office?

I'm a little surprised at how shocked shareholders were last week when Amazon (ticker: AMZN) totally whiffed on revenue for the fourth quarter, which is retailing's most important quarter. It posted quarterly revenue of $17.4 billion, missing the Street's consensus target of $18.3 billion. Net income, which fell 58% to $177 million, or 38 cents a share, actually beat low expectations.

Investors had been prepared for the big slide in earnings, knowing that margins were suffering from investments in Kindle e-readers, media services, new distribution centers and cloud computing. Since its inception, Amazon has spent like a drunken sailor in the name of innovation, expansion and increased market share. And for the most part, investors who believe in the company have been willing to overlook weak profit-margin growth as long as the top line continued to rise. But last Tuesday revenue missed expectations for the second quarter in a row, triggering a 7.7% plunge in shares, to $179.46. The stock closed at $187.68 on Friday.

Amazon shareholders have been conditioned to expect slender profit margins in exchange for sales growth, but perhaps they should start holding Amazon to profit expectations as they do other retailers. "The market has always given Jeff Bezos a hall pass on margin erosion," says Larry Haverty, associate portfolio manager of the closed-end Gabelli Multimedia Trust, which owns a small stake in Amazon. "In this case, it seems that anything that Jeff wants to do, he has a license to do. Will investors ever take the hall pass away?"

The money manager's primary concerns, besides annual margins of 4% (based on 2011 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), are that the company is carrying too much inventory and that vendors are financing its growth. Inventory swelled 56% to $4.99 billion in 2011, outpacing the amount Amazon is owed by customers. Accounts payable, the money Amazon owes its vendors, rose 38.5% to $11.45 billion last year. That $3.09 billion surge in accounts payable was only $810,000 less than the company's total operating cash flow for the year.

IN ESSENCE, AMAZON IS THROWING OFF "low-quality" cash flow, which makes it difficult to justify the high price of the shares—even after last week's drop, Haverty argues. Amazon is trading at 70 times forward earnings, compared with Apple (AAPL), which is trading at 10 times earnings.

Amazon has never been a shareholder-friendly company, and it has been less than transparent when it comes to its spending and investments. Bezos has always believed in expansion regardless of cost, and his big bets on massive distribution centers and logistics technology has made Amazon the envy of the retailing world. I don't think that investors should expect him to change his stripes after 17 years on the job. Nomura Securities Internet analyst Brian Nowak reports that Amazon plans to open at least eight fulfillment centers this year, from China to Germany to Virginia, totaling nearly 10 million square feet of distribution space. Nor would I expect Bezos to throttle back on Kindle investment or cloud-computing initiatives. The company last year deployed Amazon Web Services in South America, expanding cloud operations to eight geographic regions. Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini estimates that AWS revenue nearly tripled to $800 million in 2011.

So, if you are hoping Bezos might start behaving like Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) or Target (TGT), then investors need to take his hall pass away.

其他分析
熊 3 Elephants In The Amazon Room
熊 Does Amazon Need To 'Think Profit'?
熊 What Happened With Amazon?
牛 Analyzing Amazon's Q4 Results - Third Party In the Spotlight
中 Amazon Beats On Earnings, But What's In The Cloud?

胡同儿串子

NZX

西安

俺记得，那谁谁说什么来着。同时long and short的不是疯子就是才子。深刻哥是哪一款哪？

Diffusion

西安 发表于 2012-2-5 15:18
俺记得，那谁谁说什么来着。同时long and short的不是疯子就是才子。深刻哥是哪一款哪？

redflag

9号胡同