Tag Archives: amzn

Amazon.com Content Push Takes A Woody Allen Plot Twist

In Amazon.com ‘s ( AMZN ) latest bid to dominate the video streaming business — it added the service as a perk for its Amazon Prime loyalty program subscribers — the company announced Thursday that it had acquired the rights to famed film director Woody Allen’s forthcoming movie. The yet-to-be-named film is set to be released this summer in a standard theatrical release and then will be available exclusively to Prime members via video streaming, Amazon said. “Woody Allen is a brilliant filmmaker,” Roy Price, head of Amazon Studios, said in the company’s press release. “We’re so proud to be in business with him for both his next film and his first ever TV series.” Amazon also said that it’s hired Allen to produce an as-yet untitled six-episode television series that will begin shooting next month and star Miley Cyrus and Elaine May. The Seattle-based company has been upping its portfolio in the increasingly crowded video-streaming sector vs. Netflix ( NFLX ), Time Warner ’s ( TWX ) HBO and others. Apple ( AAPL ), for example, has been trying to put together its own video-streaming service, it’s been widely reported. In January, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners released research that indicated that Amazon Prime had 54 million U.S. members, compared with 44.7 million for Netflix. But Netflix has more actual viewers; only 40% of Amazon Prime members (21.6 million) use the free video streaming service at least once a week, CIRP said. Amazon Prime also includes free two-day shipping. On Feb. 11 Netflix announced that it had completed its migration to Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services. The move makes Netflix one of the largest companies in the world to rely entirely on the public cloud. Netflix also develops its own original content, and content from Netflix and Amazon is getting more and more award nominations and wins. Several analysts say that Amazon is poised to roll out a stand-alone video streaming service. “As Amazon has begun to re-imagine the multichannel TV bundle, we believe they are looking to create their own stand-alone bundle of on-demand and potentially linear (live event) video programming,” BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield said in a research report last month. “In December 2015, Amazon announced it was offering add-ons to Prime such as Showtime, Starz, TriBecA Shortlist, Lifetime Movie Club, among many others. And this is just the start, as we expect other services such as WWE Network to become available in the future.” Amazon said that Allen’s film is a romantic comedy that stars Jeannie Berlin, Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, Kristen Stewart, Corey Stoll and Ken Stott. In afternoon trading in the stock market today , Amazon is up 1%, near 530. The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 73, where 99 is the highest. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Will High Prime Member Churn Hurt Amazon Sales?

Amazon.com ‘s ( AMZN ) Prime loyalty program is one of the keys to the company’s e-tail dominance, but the secretive Amazon reveals little about Prime’s underlying metrics, leaving analysts to generate their own. According to a recent analysis conducted by ITG Investment Research, Amazon’s churn rate — the annual rate at which shoppers stop subscribing to Prime — was 32% in Dec. of 2015, which ITG analyst Steve Weinstein called “high.” But in a research note Thursday, Weinstein wrote that even though the company has a high churn rate, customers who dropped Prime actually spent 8% more money on Amazon.com in the year following the cancellation. Amazon Prime is one of the few extremely successful loyalty programs in e-tail, a fact that surprises Wells Fargo analyst Matt Nemer. He told IBD recently that he would have expected competitors to innovate, but few have done so with success. Competitor Wal-Mart ‘s ( WMT ) Walmart.com does not have a customer loyalty program for online sales. Target ( TGT ) recently rolled out its Red Card program, which offers free shipping from Target.com, an extra 30 days for returns and 5% off all purchases. Amazon Prime affords its members free one-day shipping in certain markets, free two-day shipping in most of the continental United States, free streaming video with original award-winning content, and a host of other perks. It’s no wonder that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is betting big on Prime: Member spending continues to drive Amazon’s sales, too. In Q4 2015, Weinstein says that Prime members generated 57% of Amazon’s North American top line and that Prime members increase their spending about 12% annually. Older Prime members tend to spend more, and Weinstein’s analysis indicated that those members who signed up in Jan. of 2012 spent, on average, nearly 45% more on Amazon in 2015 than Prime members who joined in Jan. 2014. Non-Prime shoppers spend less than $1,000 on average in 2015. Some 33% of Prime’s 46 million members have been acquired in the last two years, Weinstein says. Amazon stock rose 2.5% to 534.10 in the stock market today . The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 75, where 99 is the highest. Seattle-based Amazon posted mixed Q4 earnings — despite hauling in more than $100 billion in sales during 2015, the company missed Wall Street’s lofty earnings target. According to Nemer, Amazon captured 51% of all U.S. retail growth in Q4. He also said that the sell-off following the earnings release was too hasty and that the company continues to have strong fundamentals and a dominant position in the market.

Shopify Q4 Earnings Beat, Showing Strength Of Social Marketing

Shopify ( SHOP ) reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday morning and provided guidance above expectations, sending the stock upward. Shopify reported revenue of $70.2 million, up 99% year over year and beating the consensus estimate of $61.2 million, as polled by Thomson Reuters. It reported a 1 cent per-share loss, minus items, where analysts had expected a 5 cent loss. The company reported a 3 cent per-share loss in the year-earlier quarter. Shopify stock jumped as much as 21% in early trading in the stock market today , but it pared the advance to a 7% gain, near 22, by midday Wednesday. Shopify raised $131 million with its May 2015 initial public offering that priced shares at 17. Shares popped 55% on their first day of trading and peaked in June at above 42. Shopify provides a cloud-based e-commerce platform that businesses use to build websites and sell goods online and across multiple sales channels, including mobile and social media. Shopify says it was among the first e-commerce providers to add the ability to sell over the leading social media platforms, including Facebook ( FB ) and Twitter ( TWTR ). More than 25% of Shopify merchants have enabled social media selling. In November, Shopify announced a partnership with Facebook that lets shoppers buy Shopify merchants’ products through their Facebook pages. In September, Amazon.com ( AMZN ) selected Shopify to be its preferred platform for helping small and midsize retailers build and manage online stores. The plan lets Shopify businesses use Amazon’s payment system and other services, part of a plan that Amazon announced a year ago to ultimately shut down its Amazon Webstore business, which provides a similar service. More than 243,000 merchants use the Shopify platform, the company says. For Q1, Shopify expects revenue of $65 million to $67 million, above the analyst consensus of $62.1 million. At the midpoint, that would be a 76% increase from the year-earlier quarter. It expects an adjusted operating loss of $6.5 million to $7.5 million. For 2016, Shopify expects revenue of $320 million to $330 million, where analysts had modeled $286.7 million. “Over the holiday season, our merchants collectively sold almost $3 billion worth of products, a huge increase from the year before,” Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke said in the company’s the earnings release.