>Well, Amazon could have taken profits earlier but was investing back into the business instead, so I'd argue its quite different. Their free cash flow didn't

>Well, Amazon could have taken profits earlier but was investing back into the business instead, so I'd argue its quite different. Their free cash flow didn't really take off until AWS came along. A couple billion a year vs 100 billion in profit for Walmart. They were definitely trading cash for market share. The only reason to do that is if they can later use that market share to make even more cash.