Mark Rowen Believe Quotations

We believe we're moving ever closer to the light at the end of the valuation tunnel on eBay. We find it interesting and amusing to note that as investors' risk/reward ratio had dramatically improved, the market has become increasingly jittery about the future prospects for eBay.

Therefore, if Yahoo! shares are to provide investors with significant upside potential, then we believe it will have to become one of the most highly valued companies in the world.

We anticipate $601 million in total revenue and $385 million in U.S. book, music, video revenue from Amazon in the third quarter, ... Our $385 million books, music, video projection is flat with second-quarter results; however, if Amazon's sequential revenue growth in the sector actually comes in at 12 percent or higher, we believe the company could record as much as $650 million in total revenue.

With 2001 revenue growth rates now expected to be in a range of 9 to 18 percent and earnings per share growth expected to be negative 12 to 33 percent, we believe Yahoo!'s price-earnings multiple will contract until the company is able to demonstrate significantly higher growth rates.

In theory, in order for free shipping offers to be successful, the company would have to generate enough incremental revenue and contribution profit to pay for the cost of the shipping promotion. However, we believe Amazon.com has consistently failed to generate anywhere near the amount of incremental revenue and profit needed to pay for the lost shipping fees.

Clearly we are getting closer to the day when we'll be able to value eBay on traditional price/earnings metrics and although we would not argue that eBay is cheap based on our full-year 2001 EPS estimates of 40 cents a share, we do believe that eBay appears exceedingly inexpensive based on our full-year 2002 EPS estimate of 78 cents a share.

The higher out-of-stock position suggests that either Toys 'R' Us is not allocating additional product to its online store, or that sales at both the online and physical stores are significantly higher than plan and Toys 'R' Us does not have available inventory, ... We believe it calls into question one of the key benefits of the Amazon/Toys 'R' Us alliance, and suggests a possible lack of alignment between the partners.