Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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The first half of their existence was spent as an unprofitable business. If 2014 ends up the way it looks like it will, the net losses will outweigh the net income for the life of the business (it nearly does now).

The first ten years of their operating life were spent being famous for bleeding prodigious amounts of red ink. That's why the tag: Amazon.toast - it was assumed they would bleed to death without the easy money of the public market and a massive valuation.

Here's their net income statement going back to '97:

1997: -$32m; 1998: -$124m; 1999: -$719m; 2000: -$1.4b; 2001: -$567m; 2002: -$149m; 2003: $35m; 2004: $588m; 2005: $359m; 2006: $190m; 2007: $476m; 2008: $645m; 2009: $902m; 2010: $1.15b; 2011: $631m; 2012: -$39m; 2013: $274m

They've never been quite profitable. Only one year, 2004, did they show even a modest level of profitability (in part due to one-time gains). The rest of the positive years the margin was between 1% and 4% typically.

If I total the numbers you present, they had a net $2.2b of positive income (i.e. profit) since 1997. Small profit as a percent of revenue since 1997, but overall profit. The first quarter of this year had an operating income of $108M and the second a loss of $126M. Are you suggesting that the remaining two quarters will have approximately $2.1b of loss?

You leave out the fact that they reached profitability years before their business plan called for it, showing excellent and stable growth.

The fact that their net income imploded so dramatically rather proves the lack of stability.

You'll forgive me if I don't trust in the judgment of a business plan built on losing money for two or three decades.

They can be a good company, grow to X hundred billion in sales, struggle to ever make money, and that's all perfectly fine - but it doesn't mean they deserve a hyper valuation. Target trades at a mere $38b valuation, and they only generated $8b in net income the past three years.

Dude, I don't think the Target comparison is apt.

People say the enterprise cloud market is a Trillion dollar opportunity world wide in the next decade.

A Trillion dollars up for grabs, and Amazon has a healthy lead in the segment.

When you go to an AWS event the thing that stands out is the number of consulting and service companies that offer integration/application services to enterprises based wholly on AWS. I've been to Google Cloud events and its not even in the same ballpark as AWS. The Amazon lead is huge.

I think Amazon is still a good buy.

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