[take4]

Amazon has had positive free cash flow every year since 2001.

Netflix has had free cash flow of -$53 million, -$840 million, -$1.6 billion, and -$2 billion in the last 4 years respectively, and their debt has grown to $5 billion.

[anilshanbhag]

Exactly, Amazon also has lot of assets. They have logistics networks across multiple countries, warehouses, data centers, etc. May not be commensurate to their market cap but it does give them a solid moat.

[jedberg]

Netflix has assets too. They own a whole bunch of original shows and movies. For comparison, The Big Bang Theory has been worth a couple billion to CBS just in syndication.

They also have a worldwide CDN capable of delivering high definition video around the world.

And lastly, they have 20 years of movie viewing history. Their prediction models alone are probably worth many billions to the movie studios.

[azemetre]

Netflix doesn't even own a studio, they pay others to produce their content.

They don't syndicate their shows, they don't sell much merchandise, and they don't sell their "prediction models" or user data.

Don't get me wrong, Netflix does a lot of things right but the way they manage their entertainment divisions is extremely odd. We have over a 100 years of lessons from Hollywood and paying others to produce your content will always be more expensive than making your own.

[jedberg]

> Netflix doesn't even own a studio, they pay others to produce their content.

They have a very large studio actually:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-netflix-bronson-201701...

http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/netflix-expands-lease-h...

> They don't syndicate their shows, they don't sell much merchandise, and they don't sell their "prediction models" or user data.

The OP said "Amazon has assets". But using your argument, Amazon doesn't use any of their assets either, except for themselves.

The point is they have things they could sell that have value if they had to, just like every other public company's assets.

[bwilliams18]

Their original shows and movies depreciate far faster than most other assets and do so much more unpredictably than most assets. That 39M non-cash charge was almost certainly because of an unexpected depreciation of House of Cards post Kevin Spacey.

[jonknee]

Netflix has a lot of assets as well, though they are not physical like Amazon's. Original content can be sold again and again for decades.