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Amazon have a colossal amount of cash sat in a variety of banks, investments and probably rainbows. It makes damn good sense to splurge, sorry liquidate, stran

Amazon have a colossal amount of cash sat in a variety of banks, investments and probably rainbows. It makes damn good sense to splurge, sorry liquidate, strange and probably slightly dodgy financial instruments into tangible thingies. It also makes sense to diversify your portfolio generally. Amazon also need quite a lot of strategically placed parcels of land for its warehouses, depots and what not. If I was Amazon, I would be buying land as fast as my grubby little paws could do so, with a healthy nod to debt to value. The beauty of this is when you have shit loads of cash at hand you can grab loads of long term investments like land and win/win and you even tend to find "incentives" from grateful local govt. In this game if you get bored of buying the usual stuff like London and Texas etc, you can also grab the bits of the Caribbean that the cruise sharks have left behind. Ideal for a party island. lol etc

cwp 4y ago
The article notes that online sales growth has slowed, but honestly I don't think that matters. Amazon is building out their own logistics and that'll be useful to them even if online sales were flat. Even beyond their own deliveries, there could be an AWS-style business there.
asdff 4y ago
The placement of the land for Amazon is very strategic. Those warehouses don't just happen anywhere. Usually they are also very close to a freeway ramp because this makes it easier to get product in and reach customers. A lot of other businesses like Costco favor these same parcels for these same reasons. You'd think there would be a lot of places like this, but to be honest these sorts of huge parcels required for these businesses are rare and valuable real estate in cities. A lot of places are pretty built out already and getting a huge lot like that zoned for this use, let alone near a highway that's near a population center, is not an easy thing. I'm betting there are only a couple dozen sites like that available on the market nationally at any given time.

cwp 4y ago

The article notes that online sales growth has slowed, but honestly I don't think that matters. Amazon is building out their own logistics and that'll be useful to them even if online sales were flat. Even beyond their own deliveries, there could be an AWS-style business there.

asdff 4y ago

The placement of the land for Amazon is very strategic. Those warehouses don't just happen anywhere. Usually they are also very close to a freeway ramp because this makes it easier to get product in and reach customers. A lot of other businesses like Costco favor these same parcels for these same reasons. You'd think there would be a lot of places like this, but to be honest these sorts of huge parcels required for these businesses are rare and valuable real estate in cities. A lot of places are pretty built out already and getting a huge lot like that zoned for this use, let alone near a highway that's near a population center, is not an easy thing. I'm betting there are only a couple dozen sites like that available on the market nationally at any given time.