[bruce511]

>> otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years.

So what? I mean companies write down things all the time. "We've revalued our $billion office and adjusted our balance sheet to match. Cause was a global pandemic which we considered as a risk factor in 2019, but it was negligible."

Stock will drop a % or two for a week, then recover and move on (especially as the Amazon machine continues to print cash.)

Microsoft wrote off the Nokia purchase with a shrug and the world just moved on.

Explaining a change of work environment to investors seems like a pretty minor bump, not a major factor in decision making.

[finnh]

I agree in that I don't think explaining a write off is a problem, per se. But I do see Amazon taking a long term view of their real estate investment and saying "OK we have it in our power to make this payoff" which dynamic is not in play with most writedowns.