Safa Rashtchy Quotations

We believe Yahoo!'s stock has significant upside in it, given its inflection point in revenue and margin growth, Yahoo!'s increasing market share and the conservative guidance.

Yahoo is the largest destination for brand advertisers. Unfortunately, it has been overshadowed by search.

Yahoo! is still seen as heavily dependent on advertising, and since there is no clear recovery in the ad market yet, people aren't getting excited about Yahoo!. In reality, Yahoo! has diversified outside its core advertising market, and growth there will help it grow the top line nicely.

We have hit the bottom of the advertising slump and are seeing a slow recovery, ... Things are not getting worse, and they are getting progressively better.

Obviously, it will mean a wider ownership of the stock and potentially lower volatility. We've seen that with other stocks that have been in the S&P 500.

I would be curious and cautious about what that would entail.

For some reason, people had their hopes much higher than this, especially for the guidance. Everything seems to be in line.

If Amazon produces the numbers, nobody will care. If the growth isn't there, then I think it will become more of an issue. Why isn't there the disclosure level that we would expect?

I expect the tone of the conference call and the guidance they give to be more positive than investors expect.

It is a positive move. Investors almost hated the e-commerce business because a it was low margin operation, ... What they like about Internet media companies is they get 80-to-90 percent margins on advertising and sponsorships agreements. Why bring it down by selling something that has no margins?

On the surface, you would expect that gas prices would draw people online, but I am not a big believer in that, ... Remember that people are cutting back on spending because of higher expenses such as fuel and lower consumer confidence.

Microsoft is in the midst of repositioning MSN and they are going to get a property (AOL) that is also in the midst of repositioning? Having to fix both at the same time is going to be a challenge.

We believe this level of disparity is not sustainable and the stock is likely to correct this.

We believe there is a good chance for revenue upside, and we expect the stock to react positively to any top line upside.

Yahoo's strong performance this quarter, beating estimates and raising guidance, repeats its performance of the last three quarters and should eliminate doubts about the company's ability to generate and grow non-advertising revenues.

We believe Amazon will lack any catalysts to move it higher and we consider the stock overvalued compared to peers.

What investors were looking for was for spending to go lower. But at least costs didn't go up even further.

While some of the slowdown ... is likely due to seasonal effects, the significant drop-off is likely the sign of a more pronounced slowing in the real-estate market.

When Microsoft came out with IE there was barely anything else available and IE was good enough for newcomers.

While this may be a slower increase than we saw in 2005, this takes Amazon further away, not closer, to its goal of double-digit margins.

We also expect more spending on search advertising. On top of these broader economic sectors, we expect the Internet companies, in particular e-commerce players, will increase their spending noticeably. These trends together will bring more maturity to the online advertising sector in China.

With growth pushed off until 2007 and beyond, we would not be active buyers yet but rather look for potential catalysts over the next year.

To me, it was a very solid quarter. I'm not disappointed at all. We knew the point would come when operations would match expectations.

Competition is seriously hurting Amazon and it needs to increase spending just to keep up with the market. The picture is getting worse: more spending, steeper decline in margins.

Crossing the 50-percent threshold on broadband usage, increasing focus of traditional media companies on Internet, and most importantly, the gradual but profound change in consumers' behavior for content consumption is pushing many more advertisers to allocate more dollars online at the expense of traditional media.

The second quarter got our hopes higher for margins, which came in significantly lower than we were expecting,

People expect these companies to beat the numbers,

Although the company is still growing at a pretty handsome rate, it hasn't been beating its numbers with substantial upside.

Amazon is handling the competition fairly well, but it is not pulling away from the pack (of other Internet retailers),

Amazon insists it is still on the path to double-digit operating margin, despite the fact the 2005 guidance distinctly suggests a reversal of this course with declining incremental operating margin. Clearly, something is amiss here.

A lot of these companies are rushing back to the Internet. We're certainly not seeing anything like the valuations during the dot-com boom. They're not outrageous, but they tend to be at the high end and could not easily be justified on a stand-alone basis.

They are doing very well. The search market is growing very fast, and they'll probably continue to grow market share.

There was little new in Amazon's quarter or guidance as both followed Amazon's trend for the past several quarters, which is to meet guidance and lower margin expectations.

There's been a string of bad luck and sloppy disclosure which does reduce the confidence of investors, especially those with shorter-term horizons.

It was a very strong performance. I would expect them to have a nice upside.

It might be the case that Amazon finally reached the top level of expenses.

It's alarming, ... because you don't know if they are spending more because of exciting new products that could come out in the near future or because of competitive pressure to keep up with everyone else.

It's only possible to underestimate eBay. They set a high bar but they seem to be able to meet and exceed it every time.

It makes sense. It's an orderly way of increasing the flow and reducing the volatility in the stock.

It's not a disaster, but it's a bit of a letdown,

Everyone expects them to make a profit on operations, but if they can make more than $10 million from operations, it shows they are making some good improvements in the margin as well.

It just shows the strength of their non-advertising revenue.

The revenue guidance for the first quarter looks pretty solid.

The issue is that eBay has lost some momentum,

If the numbers are better than expected, Wall Street will assume Amazon can grow faster in the future and that bodes well for the bottom line. It would also means consumer spending, especially in the online retail arena, is holding up well.

Investors, surprisingly, acted rationally this quarter and had low expectations.

but I think eBay and even Amazon have reached pretty high valuations that can't be supported even with their growth rate.

I don't think this was disappointing at all. It gives the stock some room to breathe and come back.

The key for Amazon is definitely top-line growth in 2002 and beyond. Expectations are not that big. Our model is for a 12 percent increase year over year. That by itself is not enough. Investors expect growth will accelerate in 2003 and beyond, and for that to happen, they need to have some new service deals.

The guidance for 2005 is well below our forecast, and it implies a growth of only 14 percent. Our forecast was for growth of about 20 percent.