Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20% • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#21

Post by adventured » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

robryan wrote: post #12

canada_dry wrote: post #9

To put this in some global perspective... Alibaba's one day sales event "Singles Day" last November grossed almost half that amount (i.e. $30B). Note: Alibaba's operating margins are approx. 30%.

I assume a lot of that Alibaba volume is them collecting smaller commission amounts on a larger number of transactions? Would be interesting to know what the gross profit margin is on their revenue figure for the day.

Alibaba is an advertising platform. They're not a retailer like Amazon. The one day sales event is gross merchandise volume, not Alibaba's actual revenue. The parent comment is comparing apples and oranges.

eBay for example did $94b in gross merchandise volume in 2018, their revenue was $10.7b.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#22

Post by kgwgk » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

gringoDan wrote: post #4

$14B in goodwill! Crazy.

Mostly ($9bn) from the $13bn acquisition of WholeFoods.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#23

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #16

canada_dry wrote: post #9

To put this in some global perspective... Alibaba's one day sales event "Singles Day" last November grossed almost half that amount (i.e. $30B). Note: Alibaba's operating margins are approx. 30%.

Yet Alibaba's revenue for all of 2018 was $55B USD, compared to $232B USD for Amazon. I see that one day sale thing appear in many mentions of Amazon and it might be a little...misleading.

Am I missing something or are Alibaba seriously making more than half their annual sales in one single day?

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#24

Post by canada_dry » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #16

canada_dry wrote: post #9

To put this in some global perspective... Alibaba's one day sales event "Singles Day" last November grossed almost half that amount (i.e. $30B). Note: Alibaba's operating margins are approx. 30%.

Yet Alibaba's revenue for all of 2018 was $55B USD, compared to $232B USD for Amazon. I see that one day sale thing appear in many mentions of Amazon and it might be a little...misleading.

Yet Alibaba's operating margins are 15X (31% vs 2%) that of Amazon.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#25

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #10

Proof I have no idea how the stock market works: “Wow, that’s insane, their stock must have popped back over 2k because of this news!” checks ticker “Down 2.5% after hours...?”

AWS growth is priced in. So if the stock priced dropped, then it's likely that most analysts were expecting ~50% YoY revenue increases.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#26

Post by mattnewton » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #23

endorphone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Alibaba's revenue for all of 2018 was $55B USD, compared to $232B USD for Amazon. I see that one day sale thing appear in many mentions of Amazon and it might be a little...misleading.

Am I missing something or are Alibaba seriously making more than half their annual sales in one single day?

It looks like the one-day number is gross (ie, no costs subtracted), the other is net profit.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#27

Post by brlewis » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

mythz wrote: post #11

sharkweek wrote: post #10

Proof I have no idea how the stock market works: “Wow, that’s insane, their stock must have popped back over 2k because of this news!” checks ticker “Down 2.5% after hours...?”

As always, it's due to the results being below Wall St estimates that are already priced into the stock which is still trading at an insanely expensive 100 P/E ratio.

Price/Sales is 4.01, lower than GOOG, FB or MSFT. They are going for growth, not profit. No valuation metric is perfect, but P/E is particularly useless for this company.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#28

Post by mevile » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #10

Proof I have no idea how the stock market works: “Wow, that’s insane, their stock must have popped back over 2k because of this news!” checks ticker “Down 2.5% after hours...?”

Revenue growth slowed due to the cost of one day shipping. It's not about revenue being up, but how much revenue is growing. If revenues go up some large amount, but it's up by less percentage wise than it was up last year that means growth is slowing.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#29

Post by mgfist » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #18

endorphone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Alibaba's revenue for all of 2018 was $55B USD, compared to $232B USD for Amazon. I see that one day sale thing appear in many mentions of Amazon and it might be a little...misleading.

Revenue is nothing but bragging rights. Profit is what matters.

That's not true. Road to profitability and market cap are what matter.

Hypothetical: One business is making $100million in revenue, is losing $20million a year but has enough market cap to grow 10-100x and is spending most of its money on R&D/marketing, while a second business makes $1million in profit on $10million in revenue, but you've maxed out your growth and there's no more market cap, I'd rather be business 1, as you're on the road to potentially make hundreds of millions in profit later on.

i.e. I'd rather be Amazon some years back when they weren't profitable than some mom and pop online business that makes enough to pay the mortgage.

Re: Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales Up 20%

#30

Post by mythz » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #27

mythz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, it's due to the results being below Wall St estimates that are already priced into the stock which is still trading at an insanely expensive 100 P/E ratio.

Price/Sales is 4.01, lower than GOOG, FB or MSFT. They are going for growth, not profit. No valuation metric is perfect, but P/E is particularly useless for this company.

They're not a Startup, they've been "going for growth" for a 1/4 of a century, eventually you need to make a profit to justify your Market Cap. Just because profit isn't a goal for AMZN doesn't mean it's not a vital financial metric.