AMZN - Amazon.com, Inc.

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Black Friday: how can you tell the good deals from the bad?

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Bill Gates Tops Jeff Bezos as World’s Richest Person With Amazon Slide

(Bloomberg) -- This time it’s official.Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates overtook Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person on Friday, reclaiming the top ranking for the first time in more than two years.Gates may have been helped in part by the Pentagon’s surprise decision announced Oct. 25 to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft over Amazon. Shares of Microsoft have since climbed 4%, giving Gates a $110 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Amazon’s stock is down about 2% since the announcement, putting Bezos’s net worth at $108.7 billion.Gates, 64, had briefly topped Bezos, 55, on an intraday basis last month after Amazon posted its first profit drop in two years, but shares of the world’s biggest online retailer pared the decline. The index, which tracks the wealth of the richest 500 people, is updated each trading day after U.S. markets close. Europe’s richest person, Bernard Arnault, is third with $102.7 billion.Read more: Microsoft Shares Surge After Controversial Pentagon Contract WinMicrosoft has surged 48% this year, boosting the value of Gates’s 1% stake. The rest of his wealth is derived from share sales and investments made over the years by his family office, Cascade.Bezos would be far richer if he and MacKenzie Bezos hadn’t divorced. The pair announced their split in January, with MacKenzie, 49, receiving a quarter of their Amazon holdings in July. Her net worth dipped to $35 billion on Friday. Gates, on the other hand, may have never relinquished the top spot were it not for his philanthropy. He has donated more than $35 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 1994.Gates recently shared his thoughts on the wealth tax that’s been proposed by some Democratic presidential candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, saying he’s already paid more than $10 billion in taxes."If I’d had to pay $20 billion, it’s fine," he said. But "when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over.”As of today, that would be $10 billion.(Updates with Gates comments on wealth tax starting in seventh paragraph.)\--With assistance from Sophie Alexander.To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Metcalf in London at tmetcalf7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum, Steven CrabillFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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TIMELINE-Amazon challenges Pentagon awarding $10 bln cloud deal to Microsoft

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it is contesting the Pentagon's award of an up to $10 billion cloud computing deal to Microsoft Corp, expressing concern that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process. Last month, Microsoft beat favorite Amazon for the contract, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud, or JEDI, which is part of a broad modernization of the Pentagon's information technology systems.

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, PayPal and Facebook

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, PayPal and Facebook

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Disney, Netflix, Apple, Roku and Amazon

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Disney, Netflix, Apple, Roku and Amazon

Kroger, Ocado to Open Sixth Fulfillment Center in Wisconsin

Kroger (KR) partners with Ocado for the second time to open another CFC in Wisconsin. The move will facilitate faster grocery delivery and enhance omnichannel strategies.

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon

Warren Buffett Finds Wrong Elephant

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has $128 billion of cash. There is almost no purchase too large for the company — in fact, large is exactly what investors are waiting for. And yet, the only stock Berkshire bought last quarter was a dinky retailer, RH.Berkshire disclosed in a regulatory filing Thursday that it took a $212 million stake in RH, a California-based home-furnishings chain valued at $3.3 billion. Buffett could even buy the entire company and it’d still be a puny deal for him. But it was a big deal for RH, because the shares surged 9% in after-hours trading and held near that level early Friday morning.I admit I didn’t even recognize the retailer’s name at first. RH used to be called Restoration Hardware, a place that sells $6,000 linen sofas and elongated wooden dining tables with “forthright silhouettes.” The company shrank its name and supersized its stores, an effort to target a more upscale clientele. It’s even installed some on-site restaurants, a little nourishment to help one ponder a new addition to the ski house. That’s partly what makes RH such a funny investment for Buffett. Not only is the billionaire known for his down-to-earth lifestyle — he’s lived in the same fairly modest house for more than 60 years — but he’s also usually drawn to businesses that mirror the America he sees from his unassuming Omaha office: railroads, truck stops, Dairy Queens, the Nebraska Furniture Mart. Furthermore, Berkshire tends not to waste time on minority stakes in small, specialty chains; its only other retail holdings are Amazon.com Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp., companies valued at $870 billion and $134 billion, respectively. RH was the only new position Berkshire took in the latest quarter, aside from buying common shares of Occidental Petroleum Corp., in which it already purchased $10 billion of preferred equity (part of a financing deal to assist the oil and gas explorer in its takeover of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.). All in all, it was another dull period for Berkshire, whose last splashy stock pick was Amazon earlier in the year. With U.S. equities still on the rise, Buffett, 89, and his investing deputies are struggling to find cheap candidates. Whoever made the call on RH — Todd Combs, Ted Weschler or the Oracle himself — he may have had prescient timing. At the end of May, RH’s price-to-earnings ratio hit a low, and the shares have doubled since then, taking a big leg up in September. That said, RH’s overnight gains drove the shares above analysts’ average target level, which is $181 apiece. “The business remains tough to predict and we believe expectations may now be somewhat elevated,” Bobby Griffin, an analyst for Raymond James & Associates who has the equivalent of a “hold” rating on RH, wrote in a Sept. 11 report, citing the China tariffs and a slowdown in high-end U.S. housing. Similarly, Gordon Haskett Research Advisors wrote to clients Sept. 10 that the firm finds other retailers such as Wayfair Inc., Williams-Sonoma Inc. and At Home Group Inc. more attractive. At the end of the day, though, no matter how RH performs, it won’t have much of an impact on Berkshire’s portfolio. Another quarter has passed without a major acquisition by Berkshire, its cash pile hitting a record yet again. RH may sell a $449 wool felt elephant, but it isn’t the kind of elephant Buffett is after. The wait continues.To contact the author of this story: Tara Lachapelle at tlachapelle@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Beth Williams at bewilliams@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tara Lachapelle is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of entertainment and telecommunications, as well as broader deals. She previously wrote an M&A column for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Jeremy Corbyn Wants to Nationalize the Internet

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is behind in the polls for the U.K. election so it’s unsurprising that he’s chucking out more giveaways to voters. The policy to nationalize BT Group Plc’s fixed-telecoms networks business and provide free fiber broadband to every British household is a humdinger nonetheless.Of course, the chances of this becoming reality are slim given that Corbyn’s best hope of becoming prime minister is a coalition with more moderate political parties. Yet the idea has stimulated even more debate than Labour’s previous plans to re-nationalize the railways and the energy utilities, so it’s at least worth thinking about. Taking it at face value, the policy would be a huge mistake that would achieve the opposite of its stated aim of accelerating Britain’s sluggish rollout of fiber broadband.First, there’s the cost. A Labour government would add 15 billion pounds ($19 billion) to an existing 5 billion pound broadband spending pot, according to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. Even assuming that would cover the required capital expenditure — a big assumption — it would cost at least the same again to nationalize Openreach, BT’s networks division.McDonnell says the state would pay for the acquisition by giving BT’s shareholders government bonds as compensation. Yet why would investors, especially those outside the U.K. protected by treaties against asset expropriation, exchange an 8.1% annual dividend yield from their BT stock for the less than 1% returns from U.K. gilts? The network spending itself would be funded by an increased tax on the likes of Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. But the G-20 will probably adopt new international tax standards next year to try to curb Big Tech’s avoidance tactics. So a Labour government might not even be able to whomp up these levies without breaching the new guidelines.Then there’s the speed of rolling out the networks. While the U.K. is well behind the pace on high-speed broadband rollout (it’s 10th in the European Union’s 2019 connectivity rankings), a tortured nationalization process isn’t the answer. BT would have no incentive to keep investing during that period.The same’s true for private competitors such as John Malone’s Virgin Media, Vodafone Group Plc and Comcast Corp.’s Sky. Increased competition has at least accelerated the pace of the rollout: The proportion of homes with fiber access has doubled in two years.Infrastructure investors have also been attracted by the returns promised by fiber, prompting a flurry of investment from KKR & Co., Macquarie’s infrastructure fund and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. McDonnell’s comments have certainly caused some consternation. TalkTalk Telecom Group Plc. said it had paused talks to sell a fiber project, for which Goldman-backed CityFibre Ltd. was the lead bidder. Should Labour ever get the chance to offer free broadband to everyone through a state-owned provider, tens of thousands of private sector jobs would be jeopardized. How would other companies be able to compete?And full-fiber broadband might not even really be necessary. The adoption of next-generation 5G mobile networks promises the ability to transmit far more data at far greater speeds. That would make fiber to every home redundant in parts of the country.There are better and more thoughtful ways to get fiber installed sooner: Making it easier to get permits to build the network; permanently reducing business tax rates for new fiber; and making it obligatory for customers to accept fiber upgrades. If McDonnell is willing to hand over 15 billion pounds to BT shareholders to snap up Openreach, why not use the funds to subsidize the rollout directly?To contact the author of this story: Alex Webb at awebb25@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Alex Webb is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe's technology, media and communications industries. He previously covered Apple and other technology companies for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

U.K. Labour Plans to Nationalize BT’s Broadband Unit

(Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Britain’s Labour party pledged to offer all consumers free fiber broadband within a decade by nationalizing phone carrier BT Group Plc’s Openreach unit at a cost of 20 billion pounds ($26 billion).BT shareholders would get newly-issued government bonds in return for their shares, Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said in a speech in Lancaster, England on Friday. Shares of BT fell as much as 3.7%.It’s the biggest new pledge of the election campaign from Labour, which already has plans to nationalize the postal service, the railways and water and energy utilities. The broadband effort would be financed in part with taxes on multinational companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. While the proposals may win over some voters, Labour may not be in a position to implement them. It has an average of 29% support in recent polls, trailing the Conservatives at 40%.“A Labour government will make broadband free for everybody,” party leader Jeremy Corbyn said at the campaign event at Lancaster University. “This is core infrastructure for the 21st century. It’s too important to be left to the corporations.”McDonnell said the new broadband pledge would be funded by asking “tech giants like Google and Facebook to pay a bit more” in proportion to their activities in the U.K. “So if a multinational has 10% of its sales, workforce, and operations in the U.K., they’re asked to pay tax on 10% of their global profits,” McDonnell said.While Labour puts the cost of the plan at about 20 billion pounds, BT’s Chief Executive Officer Philip Jansen said the proposal would cost almost five times that amount.BT shares were down 1.6% as of 12:29 p.m. in London, suggesting shareholders aren’t too worried about the nationalization risk. That gives the company a market value of about 19 billion pounds.“These are very very ambitious ideas,” Jansen said Friday in an interview on BBC Radio 4. “The Conservative Party have their own ambitious ideas for full fiber for everybody by 2025.”“How we do it is not straightforward, it needs funding,” Jansen said, putting the cost of such a roll-out over eight years at “not short of 100 billion pounds.”Lower Value?BT has been working to speed up its own full-fiber build and Jansen said the company’s shares have fallen on the recognition that “we’re going to be investing very very heavily.” Shareholders “are nursing massive losses on their investment” in BT if they’d bought it a few years ago, he said.Investors could get burned, as Openreach’s business would likely be undervalued in an expropriation, New Street analyst James Ratzer said in an email, adding that nationalization “rarely works well for shareholders.” Analysts at Jefferies put Openreach’s value at 13.5 billion pounds, flagging annual costs for operations and to service its high pension deficit.Labour’s McDonnell said the party has taken advice from lawyers to ensure its broadband plan fits within European Union state aid rules in case the U.K. is still in the bloc when the plans are carried out.Britain LaggingCorbyn’s plan is meant to solve a connectivity gap: Britain lags far behind other European nations when it comes to full-fiber coverage, which allows for gigabit-per-second download speeds. About 8% of the country is connected -- just under 2.5 million properties, according to a September report by communications regulator Ofcom. That compares with 63% for Spain and 86% for Portugal.As policymakers and regulators have been creating conditions to spur more competition with BT, rivals including Liberty Global Plc’s Virgin Media and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.-backed CityFibre have been jumping in to commit billions of pounds to infrastructure plans.“Those plans risk being shelved overnight,” Matthew Howett, an analyst at Assembly, said in an email. “This is a spectacularly bad take by the Labour Party.”The Labour announcement caused TalkTalk Telecom Group Plc to pause talks to sell a fiber project as the industry seeks clarity.Analysts are skeptical the government could roll out fiber more effectively than private industry and Howett pointed to delays and budget overruns from a state-led effort in Australia.It’s not the first time radical ideas have been proposed for BT’s Openreach unit, a national network of copper wire and fiber-optic cable that communication providers including BT, Comcast Corp.’s Sky and Vodafone Group Plc tap into to provide home internet to customers.BT was forced to legally separate the division from the rest of the company in recent years over concerns about competition, and that it wasn’t investing fast enough to roll out fiber, and some investors have suggested the company should fully spin it out into an independent, listed business to unlock value.‘Fantasy’ PlanNicky Morgan, the Conservative cabinet minister with responsibility for digital services, dismissed Corbyn’s plan in a statement as a “fantasy” that “would cost hardworking taxpayers tens of billions” of pounds.The Conservative Party’s own proposal for full-fiber broadband across the U.K. by 2025 -- eight years ahead of a previous government goal -- has raised eyebrows across the telecom industry, as some executives and analysts expressed skepticism about whether it’s doable, whether there’s consumer demand for the ultrafast internet service and how companies would make money.‘A Disaster’TechUK, the industry’s main trade body, called Labour’s plan “a disaster” for the telecom sector. “Renationalization would immediately halt the investment being driven not just by BT but the growing number of new and innovative companies that compete with BT,” said Chief Executive Officer Julian David.The announcement will provide more fodder for the arguments by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives that a Labour government risks plunging the country into an economic crisis. Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid over the weekend released analysis estimating Labour would raise spending by 1.2 trillion pounds over five years. McDonnell at the time called it “fake news.”McDonnell said Parliament would set the value of Openreach when it’s taken into public ownership and that shareholders would be compensated with government bonds.Under Labour’s plan, the roll-out would begin in areas with the worst broadband access, including rural communities, followed by towns and then by areas that are currently well-served by fast broadband.According to elections expert John Curtice, Corbyn’s chances of forming a majority government are “as close to zero” as it’s possible to get. The election is still hard to predict, and it is possible that Labour could yet win power, either on its own or with the support of smaller parties.(Updates with Corbyn remarks in fourth paragraph, McDonnell in fifth.)\--With assistance from Jennifer Ryan and Kit Rees.To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net;Thomas Seal in London at tseal@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, ;Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Frank ConnellyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Target Q3 Earnings Preview: Buy TGT Stock After Walmart's Growth?

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UPDATE 2-U.S. defense chief rejects Amazon's accusations of bias in cloud contract

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday rejected any suggestion of bias in a Pentagon decision to award Microsoft Corp an up to $10 billion cloud computing contract, after Amazon.com Inc announced plans to challenge it. "I am confident it was conducted freely and fairly, without any type of outside influence," Esper told a news conference in Seoul, even as he noted that he had recused himself from the cloud competition. Amazon says that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process.

U.S. defence chief rejects Amazon's accusations of bias in cloud contract

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday rejected any suggestion of bias in a Pentagon decision to award Microsoft Corp an up to $10 billion (£9 billion) cloud computing contract, after Amazon.com Inc announced plans to challenge it. "I am confident it was conducted freely and fairly, without any type of outside influence," Esper told a news conference in Seoul, even as he noted that he had recused himself from the cloud competition. Amazon says that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process.

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UPDATE 2-Amazon challenges Pentagon's $10-bln cloud award to Microsoft

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday said it is contesting the Pentagon's award of an up to $10 billion cloud computing deal to Microsoft Corp, expressing concern that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process. The company filed notice last Friday that it will formally protest the decision on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud, known as JEDI. In a company-wide meeting on Thursday, Amazon Web Services' CEO Andy Jassy said it would be challenging for a U.S. agency to award a contract objectively when the president is disparaging one of the contestants, according to an Amazon spokesman.

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Amazon to protest Microsoft's Pentagon cloud award - WSJ

Google Checking Account, Facebook Cross-Platform Payments

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Walmart’s posted a strong third quarter earnings report on Thursday led by a 41% pop in online sales the company saw during the quarter.

Amazon challenges Pentagon's cloud award to Microsoft

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday rejected allegations by Amazon that it lost out on a lucrative Pentagon project for political reasons. (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, MARK ESPER, SAYING: "As you know I recused myself from involvement on the competition, but I am confident that it was conducted freely and fairly without any type of outside influence." Amazon cried foul after the government awarded a $10 billion dollar cloud computing contract to rival Microsoft. President Donald Trump has long criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos. Amazon filed notice last week saying it would formally protest the decision and in a company-wide meeting this week - Amazon Web Services' CEO Andy Jassy said awarding a contract objectively would be challenging for an agency when the president is disparaging one of the applicants. The project, known as Jedi, is part of a broad digital modernization initiative by the Pentagon. In a new book, a former navy commander recounts a tale where Trump called then-defense secretary Jim Mattis and directed him to "screw Amazon" by preventing it from bidding on the Jedi contract. "We're not going to do that," Mattis later told Pentagon officials, according to the book. His successor, Mark Esper, recused himself because his son works at IBM, one of the original contract applicants.