31–40 of 119 posts
Summary: Because they're "proving" they can make a profit when they want to in preparation for spending a decade investing 100% of profits into building a world-wide logistics system. (I think it's an interesting theory, but the author provided little evidence.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. Bezos can just borrow ~250 billion to buy the rest of the company. Seems easy.
A private equity firm would find the money in a heartbeat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/business/amazons-shrinking... I think a couple years ago they got tired of their stock tanking every time they reported a lower profit than previous quarters.
What are they going to doing they can't sustain these profits in future quarters?
Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. So much money is sloshing through Amazon these days, keeping it balanced to the point where you don't let it accumulate (generating profit) or flow to fast (generating loss) has got to be scary complex. At every large company I've worked at there are things on the balance sheet that are "tunable" by management which helps with this. It was a running joke inside Netwo…
Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. So much money is sloshing through Amazon these days, keeping it balanced to the point where you don't let it accumulate (generating profit) or flow to fast (generating loss) has got to be scary complex. At every large company I've worked at there are things on the balance sheet that are "tunable" by management which helps with this. It was a running joke inside Netwo…
Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. So much money is sloshing through Amazon these days, keeping it balanced to the point where you don't let it accumulate (generating profit) or flow to fast (generating loss) has got to be scary complex. At every large company I've worked at there are things on the balance sheet that are "tunable" by management which helps with this. It was a running joke inside Netwo…
Is this "tuning" typically done on the revenue side or the cost side? I'm surprised it's at all possible with proper revenue and cost recognition policies in place.
I find it very interesting to know what Amazon's competitive advantage would be from having their own logistics business. 1) Shipping is the definition of a commoditized business. Unlike AWS, for example, they will not be pioneering a new business model or technology. 2) What they pay right now to FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, OnTrac, etc. should be very close to zero margin, given their position to negotiate those companie…
It seems like you would have to look at their balance sheet to answer this, not just their income statement.
I find it very interesting to know what Amazon's competitive advantage would be from having their own logistics business. 1) Shipping is the definition of a commoditized business. Unlike AWS, for example, they will not be pioneering a new business model or technology. 2) What they pay right now to FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, OnTrac, etc. should be very close to zero margin, given their position to negotiate those companie…
No. They represent revenue for UPS, as the cite says.
That gives you no info about the percent of packages for UPS, despite the quora claim. It's not safe to assume they pay what others pay, and in fact, given the range of volume discounts, it's entirely possible they pay 1/3rd-1/5th what others pay, if not less. (I base this on the fact that the companies i've worked for, which have nowhere near amazon's volume, seem to pay around that). If that was correct, they could represent 5-6% of revenues but 15-25% of volume.
(it also tells you nothing about overall. It could be that combined across 6+ carriers, they represent a large percent of all package volume in the US).