amazing earnings tonight from amazon. tom, profits came in way above analysts' estimates, and in after-hours trading, shares skyrocketed as much 11%. tom: susie, investors were certainly surprised. amazon earned 28 cents a share, 21 cents above estimates. revenues of $13.2 billion were also better than expected. while not to the same magnitude, better than expected earnings has been a trend this quarter. and helped stocks move higher-- the dow jumped 113, the nasdaq added 21, the s&p up 9. >> susie: despite those stellar amazon numbers... there are still people that are skeptical amazon can keep the momentum going. darren gersh reports. >> reporter: not only did amazon outperform the rest of the internet retailing crowd last quarter, it also helped quiet critics worried about the company's heavy investment in the kindle. >> bottom line, good quarter for amazon. still a lot of choppiness in the quarters to come but, long-term, very positive about this company. >> reporter: amazon did not just have a good first quarter, it

amazon on fire. the company surging after a blow-out quarter, but is it too late to get in on the action? and ford tops estimates but shareholders aren't impressed. the ceo alan mulally joins us with a first on cnbc interview to talk about those results. welcome. as i said, to "the fast money halftime report" coming to you from the big board at the new york stock exchange. stocks rising despite slowing 0 growth. it seems that earnings are the main focus ever since apple reported its blow-out quarter. what's the best way to position yourself in this 2% growth world? i thought it was really interesting you have 70% or so of companies that have had better than expected earnings. since apple reported stocks are up about 2%. the market wasn't paying that much attention to those better earnings until the apple numbers came out. now it seems to be catching up a little bit. >> and the outperformers are continuing to be exactly what they were, outperformers. you look at the amazon quarter and apple l, both of

much more ahead on amazon earnings and how loyal amazon customers are compared to brick and mortar retailersa lot more from take your kids to work day. back in a moment. >>> plus, instant analysis of after the bell earnings, including starbucks, zynga, and coinstar. that's the beginning at the top of the next hour. pandora rocks the big board. what do you mean? your grass, man. it's famished! just two springtime feedings with scotts turf builder lawn food helps strengthen and protect your lawn from future problems. thanks scott. for a hot dog cart. my mother said, "well, maybe we ought to buy this hot dog cart and set it up someplace." so my parents went to bank of america. they met with the branch manager and they said, "look, we've got this little hot dog cart, and it's on a really good corner. let's see if we can buy the property." and the branch manager said, "all right, i will take a chance with the two of you." and we've been loyal to bank of america for the last 71 years. >>> welcome back. retailers like costco work hard to maintain customer loyalty and pays off for the big box giants

in february 2011 amazon introduced prime instant video as a subscription service through which amazon prime members can watch instantly and for no additional cost more than 17,000 video titles selected from thes in stanlts video library. this gives our customer to explore new video content. though we recognize our customers want to watch video content from the comfort of their homes we recognize that they are on the move and they want access to digital video. to support that demand last september amazon introduced the kindle fire, this is a fully functioning tablet that allows customers to access the internet, read books, play games and importantly watch high quality video. and, if our customers have questions about our on line video services and the kindle fire, our customer service team including specialists in our huntington, west virginia facility are standing by to help so. to answer the question posed in today's title hearing on line video has emerged, and undowdedly a key medium of future delivery. with continued growth we believe the consumer demand and choice will cause conti

it starts with amazon. soaring in a free market with strong media revenues with a sharp improvement and gross margins. will this break investors who are questioning evaluation and spending habit snuz. >> a different story from starbucks. investors apparently wanted more from quarterly results after what's been a huge run in the stock price. >> guidance in a lower waiting on shares which will, in turn, weigh on the dow today. >> don't forget spain again. s&p downgrades its rating again. the action reigniting the debate over whether france may be next. >> as for amazon, at least 8 brokerage firms are raising prices. shares are jumping sharply after blowing away industry forecasts. revenues up 34%. amazon spending aggressively on expansion, pointing to success selling more digital products through its new kindle fire tablet. going into the quarter, there were so many doubters. >> they basically told us to doubt him because he didn't give us any clarity about when the spending would turn into profits. sometimes

amazon doing quite well. expecting to come in at 12.9 and came in at 13.82, interesting quality issues that i turned up digging through the numbers from equity method investment activity. they were positive, $89 million. a year ago, they were negative $17 million. because their margins are so thin and that gets included in the eps number that we go with, that's actually a significant contributor along with their -- their great performance sales-wise in north america to this eps beat. without that 89 million, they would be significantly lower in eps. their cost of the total operational costs came in at 12.91, 12.92, so if they hadn't done better in sales and hadn't had that equity method investment activity they wouldn't have had positive eps and they did so that's why their stock is up after hours. >> that's one of the reasons it's up. the real reason it's up, as significantly as it is, is operating margins. i mean, it doesn't sound like a big number, but their operating margins came in at 1.5% which is proba

who cannot go on amazon. but, and i'm not certain yet that there's an incentive anywhere to create an answer. >> but, scott, you said "limited term." >> yes. >> and you talked about the lifetime, jane austen and her lifetime. look, the copyright term is now 75 years from the author's death. so the author might have died at the age of 75, and, um, might have written his best work when he was 20, 55 years earlier. 55 plus 35 --55 plus 75 is 130, is that a limited term? >> it wasn't the authors guild that was asking for it to be extended. >> are you asking for it to be compressed? >> because of mickey mouse. >> no. partly mickey mouse. mickey mouse. [laughter] partly it's sonny bono because sonny bono skied into a tree and killed himself whereupon he became a national hero. [laughter] and he had famously said, and he had famously said that copyright should be forever. and so his widow went to congress -- >> mary bono. >> -- and said copyright should be forever, but if you don't want forever, you know, how about

so if someone can't compete with amazon because amazon has a good device and they offer a low price then they're just out of luck and apple and others will find a way to compete with amazon, the market is too big and there's too many players interested in getting into it. so the bottom line is that you cannot get together and fix prices in order to compete and that's what they did here, plain and simple. >> brown: becky anderson, what is it that you're worried about? what do you think might be the impact? specifically in your area on independent bookstores. what's the fallout? >> well, before the agency model took effect, amazon had at least 90% of the e-book market. so that's consider play monopoly of what's out there. after it took effect they might have 50%... between 50% and 60% of the market which shows that much of the market has gone to a diverse amount of sellers and what it has done is that it's allowed readers a wide variety of choice where they purchased their e-books. with... taking the agency away and if they go back to that pricing it will go back to a monopoly type of thin

store has over amazon is browsing. and -- but that's going to change because amazon already -- it provides recommendations, because they're looking at what you're ordering, and then they're using that to make recommendations. that's a artificial intelligence service that is not highly developed. it's unsophisticated and doesn't work well, but that's just a matter of time before advances in computer science will provide much more intelligent advice from amazon on what you should be considering, and that becomes helpful to browsing so i don't think the book stores -- apart from the esoteric stuff, i don't think they have a future. as for libraries, the standard libraries, they're just dying. right? because of all the ways to get access to a book, going into a library and looking in a card catalogue and going to the shelving, that's hopeless, really. [laughter] >> if you want to do research, you do it digitally. you get access to every -- should be able to get access to every book in the world. and i just don't see -- i d

we want to watch for amazon. we're waiting on amazon numbers in just a few minutes. earnings expected should be 7 cents a share on revenue of $12 $12.91 million. s&p closing above a key 1400 level that we haven't seen in three weeks and 1% shy from the four-year closing high on s&p. based on the earnings growth in technology, industrial, and financials for the first quarter, investors want to remain overweight equities. solid earnings growth will power for 2012. portfolio manager at quantatative management associates and ben is with me. gentlemen, always good to see you. thank you for joining us. ed, you think earnings are going to power this market here? we've already seen the market trade up but is there any worry, from your standpoint, that earnings start slowing down or the guidance slows down because of what we're seeing in the global economic recovery? >> well, earnings have slowed down. we're going to grow more slowly than last year. but despite all of the things that we're worried about, we're going to see probably 6% earnings growth in the first quarter, muc

in february 2011, amazon introduced prime instant video as a subscription service through which amazon prime members can watch instantly and for no additional cost more than 17,000 video titles selected from the amazon instant video library. this gives our customers an easy

in the future, amazon will sell e-books for less than they do right now. this means lower prices for ebook consumers. down the road, this antitrust lawsuit might mean higher prices and less competition. this will help amazon take over as the ebook king by allowing them to charge less. apple has spot responded to the news of the lawsuit. -book king by allowing them to charge less. apple has spot responded to the news of the lawsuit. >> i think this is it a stretch for the department of justice. i don't think the law says what apple did was clearly illegal. so apple has concluded we're going to fight this. if the department of justice does not have a strong case, we can argue convincingly that we're staying within what the law says. >>> we were the only ones telling you about the severe weather last night that could impact the central valley into today. we did see tornadoes touchdown. there's a possibility we could see severe weather again, mainly for the central valley. spotty thundershowers into storm, but not severe ones. this is what we've got going on r

-- i will pick on brother amazon -- amazon's innovation was not technology. it was not technology. they have to use virtualization technology to enable what they are doing, but their innovation was not virtualization. for the old people in the room, ibm did this in 1972, right? their innovation was 12 cents an hour. 12 cents an hour. and transparently. we could go right now and look it up. you can buy it for 12 cents an hour. that ability to sell you -- and they are not the only ones. other people are starting to do this. so transparent, by the way. but that innovation to give you computer for 12 cents an hour. that is a business innovation. they were economically not possible before. let me give you a simple example. some of you may not know this. a couple of years ago, and they may not want to talk about this, but 350,000 people could not file their taxes on tax day. not very good. you may not know this, but the number one day for ecards on the planet is valentine's day. by a long shot. hallmark processes more on valentine's day. this is because you do not

>> we think amazon does fully expect the ebay move. we moved the stock down because we think it's just not that compelling. amazon we buy right here without a particular call on the quarter, these quarter calls are very challenging, but we like the risk ward on amazon here for the next six to nine months. >> mark, i'm going to let you run, but let me hit you quickly on groupon and these revelations i get that they may be addressing the troops, if you will, with a beer bottle and talking about drinking beer and all that. it does nothing but raise further questions that there is a lack of adult supervision in that room. are those concerns that you share as you sit here? i know you have a smile on your face, but what's the story? >> you know, i'm just going to -- i'm going to punt on that one. i don't have any problems with people drinking beer. i prefer that they not do it on the job, though. >> but seriously, mark, this is a ceo that you have a recommendation of his company. you don't have any opinion whatsoever? that wouldn't shape --

in amazon web services, you have more than 3.5 billion objects. they have to know which one to go for it here that have to break your access. then they have to break the description on the of jets. the probability of stealing your data and getting away with an attack is vanishingly small. >> i think you address one of my concerns, which was the security of my data out on the cloud, but you raised a new question -- who owns my data? what if i do want it to go away? >> there are very challenging concerns. certainly, governed by state boundaries. for example, numerous canadians do not want their data in american dissenters. under a land the vessels, that can be subject to inspection and seizure. all the regulations relate to national boundaries there as well. a cloud providers actually end up having to meet numerous diverse regulatory requirements related to where data may resign and how it may be encrypted. there are different purchase centers for different christian center's and countries -- there are different encryption centers for different regi

amazon leading the pack.rs are going to be looking closely at how sales of the kindle are doing against apple's ipad. and comscore is out with new numbers on that. and jon fortt who is in the house has them exclusively. jon. >> i want to point out all of this is u.s. data. all of it is from february before the new ipad. comscore saying first of all for every kindle fire in use there are ten ipads. let's take a look at these stats. page views by size. it turns out the ipad gets 39% more page views because the screen is bigger. ten inches versus seven. now, i also talked to the president about this data. kindle's dominance. here's what he had to say -- kindle's dominance in android tablets. let's listen. >> this one seems to be doing significantly better in terms of share. like i mentioned just in february it's at 54% share. the others from the ace is to the zooms and all that are still doing well, but nowhere as close as the android kindle fire. >> i want to show you a couple more stats. gender, android kindle

amazon and netflix both boast thousands of movies and shows available for down load, amazon prime boasts more than 17,000. fast company magazine analyzed the numbers and said in reality it's far less. fast company said netflix and amazon count each episode of a tv show as a title. he said pow power rangers counts as 715 different title. . both streaming companies are heading new titles every day but unless you have a 6-year- old who is a power ranger fan you probably don't care that they have 700 episodes of the show in its library. clickabc 2news. >> starbucks, getting rid of something the at end of june. remember the story we told you about that they were using bugs to come one food coloring in their drinks and also there -- the other -- the smoothies and cakes. well it's responding to customer requests and petitions to stop and they will stop. >>> want to try something new like sushi rolling or maybe just make new friends in a number of new services helping people connect off line for unique face to face experiences. here is megan pringle. >> texting, e-mailing, social networking, whe

>> i'm not sure amazon would buy a brick and mortar store. even if they lost the tax advantage -- >> you want to kick the tires. >> that's what best buy is for. >> get rid of the square footage. if best buy goes away, it could go away under amazon's umbrella if it's advantageous to them. >> i would say let it go away in bankruptcy, if you really think that. if i was amazon. >> the story certainly doesn't seem to be getting much better for best buy on this day, and as we head to break, the story doesn't appear to be getting better for the markets, either. last i saw, the dow industrial was down about 150. there's the s&p 500 now well below, as grasso was saying, that 1370 level. all sectors of the market accelerating to the down side. if there was any pocket of strength today, it's from the technology space, and even that's negative. energy is down. there's the industrial space. global growth names are down today when there are so many fears in the market. we mentioned how europe was trading, especially weakened. it's closed today. the energy

emesss, ixb than sincluding:16of bs inor . opical foresecology; maall of sustainabevelopme ans; e amazonn forest-- and its dirsity ofife.worldfor s the forest ecosystem iselicate bae of plants and animals, soil and water. like geography, ecology is an integrative science, bringi together many proems into one view. ecologist daelepstad whether he's gria iseseainheorescanopy of worsen. or mapng ion cpu a spatial pl the future othe amazon, ndstan t future. tonderstan we really have to go back in time and ink about the first people who arrived in the amazoon, ndstan t future. tonderstan who camep the rive-- and ink about the first people who arrived in the amazoon, and even these psented ndstanobstacles. tonderstan ifouo rth on many ofseibutars--s who anradsthe rive-- and ink about the first people who arrived in the amazoon, rrator:chthe rivetrs thatwhich locatsented in amazoa in the 1h century eud and built cities like belém, the rain forest was seen as a rich, but impenetrableesource. until the 1970s, belém was accessible to the rest ofrazil only by water. then came a wave of road buildin

monster gains are the biggest driver and amazon is at 170 p.e. it's up nearly 16%. expedia, meantime, a big post earnings gain there as well with a 14% -- 14 p.e., by the way, by comparison, and it's at an all-time high today. it's one of more than three dozen highs within the s&p and a number of them, majority of them are retail and consumer-related. riley automotive posting a much better than expected first quarter margins, dollar thrift tea getting an upgrade. simon property group is reported better than expected sale, double the full-year guidance after it is profits had tripled and it's seeing a lot of folks coming into those malls, maria. >> bertha, thank you so much. bertha coombs with the latest there. treasury prices pulling back despite better than expected gdp. rick santelli is at the cme group. rick? >> i tell you we're at a 188 yield at 2:00 a.m. eastern. definitely we're higher at 193. at 193, we're lower on the day as you look on the intraday. as we go out to the week, we're several basis points out on the week and we're going to make a fresh, low clo

>> it will be hard to see amazon not be in the picture. but what is interesting about the joint venture with microsoft is they haven't yet named it. the obvious name would be nook but they haven't used that. so it will be interesting to see what vehicle they really create but i will anticipate that will do well swz all right, john, thank soches. dow have any disclosures to make? >> no. >> susie: all right, john tinker of maxim group. >> thank you. >> tom: monday's are known for merger announcements and rumors. it wasn't just microsoft's investment in barnes and noble. first, the rumor: coca-cola late today denied it was in talks to buy monster beverage. there were reports out during the day that coke was negotiating what would be its biggest brand buyout, probably over $11 billion. after closing in the mid-$60 range last week, the rumors pushed monster stock up to almost $84 dollars per share, before tumbled just before the closing bell when coke denied the deal. in energy, sunoco shareholders will get more than $50 per share from pipeline

amazon prime is much better. >>> thank you again for all twur tweets.e love hearing from you, and continue to tweet us your views. >>> cocky and arrogant, okay for oil companies, but not netflix. we have a problem there. >> interesting insight. >>> before we go, let's recap the stock market. the s&p 500 ticking up six cents, rising on the back of strength of utilities. we're getting no help from techs, 1.5 -- fell 1.5% this week. nasdaq composite losing ground for a third consecutive week, the longest weekly losing streak since november of last year. that does it for "closing bell." the thing i want to point out, next weeks, apple again. >>ni

plus if amazon were trashing the tenants of the shopping centers of the world, how is frt able to raises last year which happens to be much higher than the peers for which is 1.9%? plus, federal is a serial dividend raiser. stock only yields 2.8% at these levels because the share price is going up so much. when you include reinvested dividends, frt has given you a double since i first got behind it in may of 2009. that's why i'm thrilled to have don wood, the ceo of federal realty tonight to talk about the amazoning of america. mr. wood, welcome back to "mad money." >> hey, jim. thanks for having me on. appreciate that. >> first on, happy 50th birthday. >> well, thank you so much. that's the company. personally, i'm past it. but the company is at 50. >> obviously, if you're 50 years old, you've been able to deal with lat of different traumas, not just what might be happening with amazon and bricks and mortars. >> it's funny. when you started that segment and started talking about best buy, i think it would have been three years ago and the conversation would have been ç circuit city or

if i may suggest, at amazon we start with our customers and work backwards to try to figure out what they would want. in this context, in congress' role, to look at the citizen consumer and work backwards from that. what would they want? i believe they would want as much choice, as much selection, the greatest value, the greatest convenience possible. as we look at the telecommunications laws as they exist today, try to put ourselves in the shoes of the citizen consumer, see what they would want, rather than what the industries do. >> i want to ask this of both mr. diller and mr. misener. how critical is net neutrality to this ability to be able to let the net -- to distribute and to develop in this sort of way that you've described? >> sorry, please. >> after you, sir. >> i would say it's at parity with the need for national broadband policy that gets us to be, if not number one, i wouldn't settle for less than number two. we are now number 18, i think. >> something like that. 16, 18. >> net neutrality is mandatory. because there is no question that without it, you will see the abso

amazon heading higher and should you buy it ahead of results?bring in the senior research analyst. what's the word here? what should we watch out for? kindle, we don't get that much detail. margins are important and we have been spending a lot of money. >> the top line is important and they will be just fine based on the results. we cannot bet on amazon and i would not be long in the stock. the reason is this. the march quarter was 38%. it jumps to 52% in the june quarter. you look at the numbers and they are not going in. they are looking for 29% growth and 29% in q2. this is going to be a great story to own, but look out for the top line guide coming tomorrow night. >> i am shorted through put spreads. i do not get it. it's a fantastic company and the valuation, i feel like this level of sales, they should be starting to see some margin leverage and that really has not happened. $60 billion and $70 billion. whatever the top line is going to be. isn't it late to hope that the expansion is there and it reflects not growing to the moon, but half

so if seone ca'tompe wh amazon caus amazon h a good device and they offer a low price then they're just of luck and apple and others will find a way to compete with amazon, the market is too big and there's too many players interested in getting into it. so the bottom line is that you cannot get together and fix prices in order to compete and that's what they did here, plain and simple. >> brown: becky anderson, what is it that you're worried about? what do you think might be the impact? specifically in your area on independent bookstores. what's the fallout? >> well, before the agency model took effect, amazon had at least 90% of the e-book market. so that's consider play monopoly of what's out there. after it took effect they might have 50%... between 50% and 60% of the market which shows that much of the market has gone to a diverse amount of sellers and what it has done is that it's allowed readers a wide variety of choice where they purchased their e-books. with... taking the agency away and if they go back to that icing it will go back to a monopoly typofthing. ththinis, supreme t