Amazon isn't making any money yet. Maybe in future they will make some. I don't like using AWS (I just don't know why), I prefer Microsoft Azure and Digital Ocean.
Amazon makes TONS of money. They aren't currently returning any of it to shareholders as profits, they're continuously reinvesting it in the company.
The difference between gross profit and net profit is how much Amazon is spending on building new businesses that after a few years start grossing $10b a year in sales like AWS. That got funded out of the gross profits from regular Amazon retail operations.
This seems like a huge distinction that people don't make often enough with high-performing, fast-growing companies. You see it with Tesla, too, when people claim that the Model S is "sold at a loss", ignoring the fact that a large part of the company's current expenditure is in setting up huge new factories.
I'd have thought comparing funding expanding Amazon's data centre capacity from revenue is very comparable to Tesla building out it's manufacturing capability the same way.
If you want defined returns you can buy amazon bonds today. if you want to try to triple your money in 5 years, well, maybe that'll happen with the stock again. who knows?
Not to mention that MSFT went from $50/share to $30/share under Ballmer's tenure as CEO. Not sure he has any legs to stand on to bash AMZN about being a "real business."
$596 million in net income the last four quarters to be exact. So yeah, they are making money.
Further, AWS is a money printing machine. It's generating over $700 million in operating income per quarter, and that's growing very fast. It'll be at $5+ billion per year in operating income within perhaps just two or three more years. There aren't very many technology businesses anywhere producing that kind of operating income.
Haven't tried Azure yet - will give it a spin eventually. I love Digital Ocean compared to AWS. Sure, AWS has a lot of bells and whistles, but this simplicity of DO is just what I need most times.
AWS has moved on from single-EC2-instance simplicity. It's not worth it if you don't need a virtual rack of servers with all the VPC networking that comes with it.
But if you _do_ need that, like we do, it's bloody brilliant.
Amazon makes TONS of money. They aren't currently returning any of it to shareholders as profits, they're continuously reinvesting it in the company.
The difference between gross profit and net profit is how much Amazon is spending on building new businesses that after a few years start grossing $10b a year in sales like AWS. That got funded out of the gross profits from regular Amazon retail operations.