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Drugstore.com losses grow
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April 24, 2000: 4:57 p.m. ET
But online pharmacy's first-quarter results easily beat Wall Street expectations
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Online pharmacy Drugstore.com reported a smaller-than-expected loss for the first quarter of the year Monday, as orders for prescription drugs and health and beauty items from new and repeat customers rose.
Drugstore.com (DSCM: Research, Estimates), which is partially owned by online retailer Amazon.com (AMZN: Research, Estimates) and drugstore chain Rite-Aid Corp. (RAD: Research, Estimates), lost $38.9 million, or 86 cents per diluted share, for the quarter ended April 2. These results exclude special items associated with amortization of intangible assets and stock-based compensation.
 Analysts polled by First Call Corp., which tracks quarterly earnings, had forecast the company lost $1.02 per share in the latest period, compared with a 48-cent per share loss a year earlier.
Excluding special items, the company lost $49.5 million, or $1.09 per share, for the three months.
Sales totaled $22.7 million, a 23 percent increase over the 1999 fourth quarter. Sales totaled $652,000 in the year-ago period, before the company went public on Wall Street. The company said it added 295,000 new customers in the first quarter, a 42 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 1999.
The results were released after Monday's market close. Prior to the news, Drugstore.com stock closed up 5/8 to 8-11/16. Shares were little changed in after-hours trading, slipping 1/32 to 8-21/32.
The company's shares have fallen about 89 percent from their all-time high of 70, hit last summer soon after the Bellevue, Wash.-based Drugstore.com went public.
Drugstore.com is one of many electronic retailers that have seen their stock prices fall sharply in the past few months, as investors question the companies' business models and their profitability outlook. 
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Drugstore.com
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