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Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

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Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#51
My theory is they simply can't find enough things to spend on, but can't afford to lower AWS pricing without being swamped with more demand than they can handle.

I don't think Amazon are preparing for period of capital investment - making profits and then taking them away is surely worse than consistently making very little as far as the stock market is concerned.

This is not the sort of problem many businesses come up against.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#52
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos is in it for the long haul. He's probably the most impressive business person there is right now. Buffett and Musk are impressive in different ways.

Sorry, but Bezos and Buffet are not even in the same league as Elon Musk.

Who, then, would you say is in Mr. Musk's league?

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#54
post #30
post #25

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…

Controlling the last mile logistics means that Amazon can sell even more products. They can capture "I need it now" purchases with one-hour delivery, and they can capture grocery purchases because they can make sure the deliveries happen before the goods perish -- enabling them to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart.

Which feeds right into Prime, a subscription service locking the customer into Amazon's closed ecosystem. It makes sense to have full vertical control.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but Bezos and Buffet are not even in the same league as Elon Musk.

Who, then, would you say is in Mr. Musk's league?

No one is in the same league as HNs God King Musk.

Jeff is only worth about 50 billion dollars (only what, 4x Musk?). Plus his rocket company is only landing suborbital flights. What scrub.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spending $500m, $1b or $2b on video content is pretty easy to time.

But that isn't an immediate expense it's a balance sheet asset written off over a period of time.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#57
post #25

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…

Because Bezos can't get a crappy USPS delivery person off of a shift that affects a bunch of his customers.

[deleted]

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#58
post #7
post #6

Because that was the plan all along? At some point Amazon is going to get a return for all of its investment. The entire market is now dancing to Amazon's tune. Why not now?

They don't seem ready to me. Seems like a temporary blip due to their investment schedules. They clearly have ambitions to build out a logistics infrastructure, and they haven't even setup in some obvious markets yet (Australia). Lots more growth to pursue.

30 million people over those distances? I wouldn't roll out in Au until driverless delivery.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#60
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos is in it for the long haul. He's probably the most impressive business person there is right now. Buffett and Musk are impressive in different ways.

Sorry, but Bezos and Buffet are not even in the same league as Elon Musk.

My gut instinct was to agree with you, but with consideration pbreit is correct in my opinion.

Musk is more innovative in areas that matter for meaningful human progress (SpaceX as opposed to Wal-Mart 2.0), but I believe as far as "business" is concerned Bezos is on top right now.

They have different priorities. Personally I'm a Musk fanboy.

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