Amazon reported their financial results for their first quarter last week. They had sales of $22.7 billion and somehow managed to lose $57 million. So you have a company with revenue growth of 13% that is losing money. The stock was already selling at an outrageous price of $385 per share. Wall Street’s reaction to 13% revenue growth and increasing losses was to drive the price up $65 in one day to $450 per share. It is up 56% in the last 6 months, while it was losing $400 million in the last 12 months. If you look really really hard at the chart below you still won’t see the profit bars. Maybe a magnifying glass will help.
This company had a negative operating cash flow of $1.5 BILLION for the quarter. It’s free cash flow was NEGATIVE $2.4 billion. It’s price to book value is 13.4. A normal price to book value is 1.0 to 2.0. It doesn’t have a PE ratio because you need earnings to calculate this ratio. This company is the poster child of the delusion that has overtaken our financial markets. Bezos always promises future profits that never materialize. Wall Street buys on the promises and spins stories about new paradigms, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before. We heard it in 2000 and we heard it in 2007. It always ends the same way. If you don’t believe me then just borrow on margin and pile into this juggernaut of losses.
You will find more statistics at Statista
There are quite a few of these ‘technology’ companies that have no P/E ratio because they don’t have any earnings.
Facebook, LinkedIn to name a few.
This security flaw puts online shoppers’ data at risk
By Priya Anand
Published: Apr 26, 2015 11:11 a.m. ET
Criminals are exploiting a vulnerability in about 87,000 e-commerce websites that puts information including customers’ stored credit-card data at risk.
The online shopping websites were susceptible to a chain of weaknesses on the platform Magento, which runs on about one-third of online shops, as of Friday morning, according to the Tel Aviv, Israel-based security company Check Point Software Technologies. Cybercriminals who exploit the security holes could “take complete control of the website with pretty much a single request,” says Shahar Tal, the company’s head of malware and vulnerability research.
“For all the credit cards that are stored in the system, the attackers are going to have access to that,” Tal says.
Through the security flaw, criminals can access databases with customers’ personal information, or inject nasty code into the website so it infects users with malware. Check Point discovered the vulnerability and reported it to eBay EBAY, -0.69% , which owns Magento, in January, Tal says, and made it public this week.
Magento says it issued an update that fixed the weakness on Feb. 9 and began notifying customers the following day. But Check Point says it has heard that Magento didn’t send alerts to notify all users that they needed to push a security update through until last week. Magento says it is “not aware of any impacted customer data from the vulnerability.
Brands that run online shops on Magento include Nike, Ghirardelli, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Rebecca Minkoff, Zumiez and Rosetta Stone, all of which have installed the security update, Magento says.
“Any customer that has not yet implemented the patch is encouraged to visit our customer and partner portals and to do so immediately,” Magento told MarketWatch in a statement. “We are focused on eliminating the vulnerability and are committed to ensuring the Magento platform is safe and secure for commerce.”
Tal says researchers have seen attackers scanning for websites that run on Magento, and then adding additional administrator accounts to those systems so they can log back in later to steal data.
“The vulnerability has been out there for years now,” he says. “The fact that we discovered it right now as part of our vulnerability research efforts does not necessarily mean it just started to be exploited right now.
Online shoppers are generally at the mercy of the websites they’re purchasing from when it comes to security. But there are several security factors customers can bear in mind:
Look for the padlock in the URL. That indicates the website is using HTTPS, which encrypts communications.
Be selective when it comes to saving your payment information on websites for later purchases. “If you do not store your credit card, it won’t be out there for attackers to get.
Check every line of your credit card statements — even the small buys. Criminals often begin by charging small amounts to an account each month to test whether the real accountholder will notice. “If you do that to 1,000 people and you’re just charging $7 each, then you’re already at a good profit,” Tal says.
Take one minute to do some due diligence. Does the online retailer that you’re trusting with your information care about security? It’s hard to know. But many companies offer bounties to researchers who find security weaknesses or bugs. Tal says customers can find these by Googling the company’s name and “bug bounty” or looking for a page where users can report security issues. “When I see a platform that has a bug bounty…then I know that the incentives are aligned to have things fixed at that platform as soon as they’re discovered.”
Amazon May as we’ll be a government entity.
What’s insane is Bezos is a billionaire by running a company that never made a profit & is a net drain on the economy.