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How about if we made an improved metric, which takes Amazon's story into account? Something like static-profit/equity, with static-profit being the profit they

How about if we made an improved metric, which takes Amazon's story into account? Something like static-profit/equity, with static-profit being the profit they would be making if they weren't investing in growth? I suspect this is difficult to get exact numbers for since separating per-item costs vs growth-investment costs won't be separated. But I don't think it would be hard to estimate given a slightly more detailed breakdown of operating expenses.

greedo 10y ago
Sure, if Amazon was forthcoming with any detailed sales breakdowns, but they aren't. Try to find any specific Kindle sales etc. It's always vague "Best sales ever" type comments. My biggest issue with the Amazon crowd is the idea that Amazon is such a special snowflake in terms of operations that investors need to disregard P/E completely, because of the theory that Amazon can just "turn on profits" at will instead of redirecting cash flow to expansion. Retail isn't a new business model, nor is AWS. The only thing that is relatively new is selling over the Internet, and the barriers to entry for that are lower and lower each day; and it's not as if Amazon is lacking competition in each of its business areas. It's similar to the hype around TSLA; that somehow TSLA will be able to achieve an Apple like model where they skim all the profits off of the EV market, and that their competitors are incompetent in comparison to TSLA. I'm a huge fan of Musk, and I hope his multitude of endeavors succeed, but I'd never invest in any of them long term.