41–50 of 103 posts
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Protip. Put expensive stuff you want for yourself on the registry. It's unlikely that anyone will buy it (but hey if they do great!) but after the due date they send you a coupon for 20% off if you buy everything left on your registry. We got a bunch of lego sets for the older kid that way, and the discount counted!
Now I want to set up a registry and pay my family to buy the cheaper items to try to get the coupon...
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that just due to their accounting preferences? Amazon has had the capability of making profit for years, but prefers to expense everything off in an effort to grow rather than pay increased taxes. Their skyrocketing market cap hasn't been due to a change in the company's direction so much as investors gradually realizing this strategy and the raw growth potential of where Amazon has…
> prefers to expense everything off What does that mean?
When a company makes a profit, it pays taxes on that income. The dividends are then either 1. distributed proportionally to the shareholders, or 2. reinvested into the company.
The general idea is that reinvestment will generate more profit in the long term. In this case, the company reinvests the income into operations and growth during the next fiscal period and onwards. This method of reinvestment, however, still requires some taxes to be paid on the income.
As an alternative, a company can fill their income statement each quarter with expenses that will ~match their income. This way, they're essentially reinvesting in their operations and growth just the same, however they don't have to pay the taxes if the expenses are generated in the same quarter. This method makes the company look unprofitable, but in reality is merely an accounting choice (and arguably, a good one).
A random article I found that explains some of the strategy: http://www.businessinsider.com/analysts-wrong-about-amazon-p...
Wow. How is that even possible? Growing by a third in one year at that scale is completely mind boggling to me.
International, and unclear if subsidiaries like WFM come into play in this?
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Anecdotally, I've started using Amazon FBA for things that I used to use eBay for. Say I want a 2.2" ILI9341-driven TFT screen. That's not exactly something that you need everyday, so I could go to AliExpress/Taobao and get N for $3 ea in ~3 weeks, or eBay to get one for $4-5 in a lottery of anywhere from 3 days to 2 months. But now, I can get one from Amazon for $10 tomorrow. It has prime shipping, which means you g…
Interesting--I've found myself switching the other way recently. I used to do a lot of purchasing on Amazon, but have moved more and more over to eBay. Prices tend to be better there, even on new items. No sales tax. Most sellers now offer free shipping, and you don't have to fill your cart to $50 or whatever it is to get it, and that free shipping isn't the "carried on the back of a mule" speed like Amazon's.
It used to be the case that Amazon was very rarely significantly undersold. Starting ~3 years ago, I started to find that Amazon was somewhat frequently undersold by enough that I was willing to wait for Ebay or Ali (or camelcamelcamel to email me an Amazon price drop).
I think Amazon's current positioning is more profitable for them and makes me happy as an investor in AMZN, but as a consumer, it makes me Google shop more often than before.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that just due to their accounting preferences? Amazon has had the capability of making profit for years, but prefers to expense everything off in an effort to grow rather than pay increased taxes. Their skyrocketing market cap hasn't been due to a change in the company's direction so much as investors gradually realizing this strategy and the raw growth potential of where Amazon has…
> prefers to expense everything off What does that mean?
Say you land a long term contract to provide a service for 5 years and you need to buy extra hardware to fulfill this service, you can choose to expense the hardware immediately in the first year while you let the earnings come in over the next 5 years. In the first year you would be taking a huge loss (on paper), and in the following four years you would see larger than average profits (on paper).
Alternatively, you could acknowledge the full value of the contract immediately. Or another alternative is to expense the hardware over time.
I'm not an accountant, but this analogy is my basic understanding of the flexibility that companies have.
I am very curious about Wallmart policies against Amazon growth. With this pace amazon will eat Wallmart eventually. And Wallmart is biggest company on earth. What they are going to do?
In many ways amazon has already eaten walmart. In what way is walmart the biggest company on the earth?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers?wp...
I am very curious about Wallmart policies against Amazon growth. With this pace amazon will eat Wallmart eventually. And Wallmart is biggest company on earth. What they are going to do?
In many ways amazon has already eaten walmart. In what way is walmart the biggest company on the earth?
I am very curious about Wallmart policies against Amazon growth. With this pace amazon will eat Wallmart eventually. And Wallmart is biggest company on earth. What they are going to do?
In many ways amazon has already eaten walmart. In what way is walmart the biggest company on the earth?
Wow. How is that even possible? Growing by a third in one year at that scale is completely mind boggling to me.
They have no profit. Color me unimpressed.
I am very curious about Wallmart policies against Amazon growth. With this pace amazon will eat Wallmart eventually. And Wallmart is biggest company on earth. What they are going to do?
In many ways amazon has already eaten walmart. In what way is walmart the biggest company on the earth?