Jim:    Last night, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ*) reported a superb quarter!  Congratulations to Mark Hurd, the excellent CEO...   It let us know that tech seems to be coming back into style!...

Don't get me wrong... we like HPQ*'s results, but the biggest beat in tech didn't come from that printer and computer and soon-to-be consultant...

It came from Amazon.com (AMZN)...

...making it, in my opinion, the name to own, if you want to play the tech comeback that I see happening after Labor Day...

Now, I know also that this shouldn't be part of the equation... I try to ban it at all times, but AMZN's one darn exciting stock to own...

Alright, last week, AMZN was trading as high as $88... It's come back down. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting. I was going to do this
piece last week, but it was too high... It's come back down to $82 and change, but I think this is a good entry point, given the quarter the company
delivered back on July 24th...

And, just as important, the strength of The Kindle... which looks like it could be delivering iPod-esque sales numbers, if not at least a Walkman...

To understand why I think AMZN - this fallen member of the Four Horsemen of Tech - is now very much back on its feet, you have to look at that beautiful quarter it reported nearly a month ago... Remember, this was a quarter when gas prices were much higher and food prices were much higher... The consumer wasn't just getting squeezed, he was getting waterboarded, and then put on the rack...

So, how did AMZN do the "happier days are here again?"...

Well, it earned 37 cents a share, while the Street was expecting 26 cents. Now, that's a 46% beat! That is one of the hugest ones I've seen... And, to me, that still matters, even if the earnings were in-line, when you exclude items and one-time gains...

But the big story of the quarter came from AMZN's sales... not its earnings! The company's revenues came in at $100 million, or about 2.5% above consensus (estimates by analysts)... giving AMZN - get this - 41% year-over-year sales growth, in an environment where retail was getting mutilated...

When things were bad, AMZN's active customers grew by 18%... its active sellers by 18%... And growth in sales per active customer came in at 19%.

These are unbelievable numbers!... We're in a recession! It's all horrible, right... isn't it all gloom and doom?...

No.

AMZN increased its margins - its profitability - in international business and, best of all, management said there were no signs of a consumer slowdown, as far as they were concerned...

Did you hear that from J. C. Penney (JCP)?... Did you hear that from Macy's (M)?... Did you hear that from Kohl's (KSS)?... Did you hear that from Target (TGT)?...

No!

Sure, you could say that higher gas prices helped AMZN, because people kept going from bricks and mortar stores at the end of the day to online... And this one's a retailer, just like everybody else. And, if consumers have less money to spend on discretionary stuff, that shouldn't hurt them. It didn't seem to last quarter and, now that more people have money in their pockets, thanks to lower prices on everything from gas to chicken, you've got to imagine things will get better at AMZN.

And, can I also say that the customer experience at AMZN is so great, that I doubt new customers who got out of their cars and didn't go to the mall, will ever go back to their old ways...

Throw in the fact that... here's a piece of information that on one's talking about, except for Cramer... Throw in the fact that every state in this country is hurting for cash right now, and it's very likely that many of them will raise sales taxes, because they have to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government... And, AMZN, which only makes you pay sales tax on your purchases, if your ordering from Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington... five out of 50 states... will become an even more appealing place to shop...

Then there's The Kindle...

I know there's been a lot of mixed opinion about this, and the company's been doing its best to keep Kindle sales under wraps... But a pretty credible report from Citigroup estimated that Kindle's sales would be just under 400,000 by the end of the year... Those look like early iPod sales to me and, when you take into account that Kindle book sales made up more than 10% of book titles sold... up from 6% in April... not that long ago... and the fact that customer reviews have become increasingly positive... it looks like AMZN has a major gadget on its hands... in addition to being a top-notch online retailer...

Remember when Sony used to come up with them?...

To me, Kindle's a game changer, period.

As for how AMZN stacks up against other online players, well, here's pretty amazing stuff... It's actually been able to outperform Cramer fave, GOOG... who's CEO, Eric Schmidt, we had on last week... in operating profit growth... It's been able to out-do EBAY in sales volume and customer acquisition...

AMZN's got lower margins than both EBAY and GOOG, but that makes it easier for AMZN to add new products and services, like The Kindle...  and its Prime program - which is really good, have you seen that one? - let's users get free shipping, in exchange for a yearly subscription fee... That could help close the margin gap.

The Amazon Prime, especially, has helped the company keep customers. Once you pay the fee, how can you not shop exclusively at Amazon for the free shipping? And they're expanding the program internationally... just like they already expanded their third-party sales program internationally... a big reason why I think international performed so well last quarter.

This company's going to be like Google one day... It's going to get 52% of its business from international...

AMZN's got a new kicker here, and this one no one is talking about... no one...

It's called "Amazon Fresh"...

This program sounds like a lot of the failed dot-com enterprises from the '90s... It's an online grocery store that Amazon's testing in Seattle... Amazon pays sales tax on all taxable items... If you order before midnight, you get the groceries before dawn... If you spend more than $25, there's no shipping fee...

AMZN has been testing this program since last August, expanding it into more neighborhoods. I think this could work all over the place, even though the idea didn't back in the dot-com era, because gas prices are so much higher... and because AMZN is already near a one-stop shop platform for nearly everything you want to buy on the web...

Why not have groceries?... And get people to buy more things on the site?...

I think this same-day innovation will be gigantic... and, don't forget, AMZN is such a big customer of FedEx (FDX), that I bet Fedex has to bend over backward, and keep delivery costs much lower than for any other client...

This is so smart!... AMZN is so smart!...