Contents
1. Amazon Slugged by Warehouses
2. COMPS.COM's New Investor

1. Amazon Slugged by Warehouses... You got to love the headline in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal (Jul 22). "Amazon.com posted a $138 million loss for the quarter and warned that future results will be affected by heavy spending on bigger warehouses." The WSJ quotes Jeff Bezos as saying that Amazon will spend $300 million "in the short term" to build warehouses to handle its shipping. ... And, according to the New York Times of the same date, "by the end of this year the company expects to have seven distribution centers nationwide, with four million square feet, 10 times its capacity a year ago." ... Hey, get me more of that e-commerce, virtual stuff.

2. COMPS.COM'S New Investor... Remember when I mentioned the 10--K Wizard in the July 8 Dispatch? This is a wonderful new (free!) tracking service for SEC documents. Well, I entered a few different companies to track, including COMPS.COM. On July 12, I received a notice from the 10-K Wizard that there was a new filing for COMPS. So I clicked the URL and went to a copy of a 13D Filing (for persons buying more than 5 percent of a company). Hmm. So who's been buying shares in COMPS?

Well, it turns out that Halsey Minor bought 699,000 shares (5.92 percent) of COMPS "in a series of open market transactions between May 25, 1999 and July 2, 1999," for the Minor Revocable Trust. ... Minor is President and CEO of CNet, which is one of the very few Internet players actually making money. The 34-year Minor was the subject of a lead story in Fortune, June 21, which described CNet as "a hybrid old-media/new-media company, blending elements of Consumer Reports, PC magazines, the Discovery Channel, and Bloomberg." That's a mouthful.

I used Quicken.com to bring up a chart of COMPS.COM (CDOT). Eyeballing the chart, it looks like COMPS' price fluctuated between $7 and $9 a share during this time period, which would indicate a total investment of about $5.6 million. As of the market close on July 21, 1999, COMPS' market cap was $103 million.

Chris Crane, CEO of COMPS.COM reports that he's "very pleased that one of the leading Internet CEO's has acquired approximately 6 percent of COMPS. COM stock" and that Minor has provided "excellent input on our Internet strategies." ... Sounds interesting. ... Full Disclosure: I don't own stock in COMPS.COM, or any other real estate company that I write about in the Dispatch.

--Peter