They're investing in growth. It's unclear if that investment is good or bad, but looking at quarterly accounting numbers won't tell us. All we can see here is t

They're investing in growth. It's unclear if that investment is good or bad, but looking at quarterly accounting numbers won't tell us. All we can see here is that they're investing more than they're making. If you created a business that simply bought $1M worth of Stocks (e.x. ETFs) and bonds, the first quarter when you made the initial investment you'd show a "loss" of $1m. You might sell those 10 years later for $2m (or maybe the value goes to $0). You wouldn't know if it was a good or bad investment until much later. Seeing a $1M quarterly loss from that first quarter of investing wouldn't give you any insight at all. To make matters worse here, the way that quarterly accounting works generally hides what are investments and what are actual losses. Some pre-profitable companies do better than others here but it's fairly difficult to understand what parts of spending are investments and what parts are just burning money when looking at quarterly accounting statements.