So, I guess after 5+ years after having left Amazon I feel I can provide some insight, mostly based on SEC filings (unless we accuse Amazon of cooking the books

So, I guess after 5+ years after having left Amazon I feel I can provide some insight, mostly based on SEC filings (unless we accuse Amazon of cooking the books, those tell us the aggregated "truth") and conclussions drawn from my experience: - Amazon retail is profitable, with acceptable but not stellar margins for a retail business, the US part is so - Amazon's international retail business is, at best barely break-even, and no, I never saw a breal down by country - Amazon's retail arm is the cash machine, it is always cash positive (potential, but rare, exceptions in Q3) - In agregate, Amazon's retail arm is cash positive and profitable, some rare exceprions occur in Q3 (ramping up inventory for Q4 is a drain on both) - Fulfillment by Amazon is a genius thing, hugely profitable with basically no additional fix costs on the operations side, while only occuring variable costs and increasing utilozation of Amazons full logostics network - FBA also gives Amazon oncredible insights into the eCommerce business of others, and here it starts to become tricky (none of the other points so far are an issue anti-trust wise) - Profits come, last time I checked (years ago) arpund 80% or so, from AWS, revenues and cash flow come from Retail (also around 80%) - No idea how profitable or cash contributing Prime Video and adds are, I assume the latter have to be very interessting so - Devices are basically just a means to sell Prime subscriptions, Audible subscriptions and stuff - All tax shenenigans Amazon did were genius, and legal (doesn't mean those tricks shouldn't be prohibited, but back then they weren't, so...) - Nobody outside Retail knew which product lines made how much money (profit and cash), and even then only the one they were involved in, management knew the aggregate (also, only retail management, and I won't ever share the few numbers I happened to see) - Amazons accounting is top notch, from inventories to cahs flow, profits and beyond, if you think whatever is published is not sufficient, discuss changes to accounting rules (GAAP and IFRS) and not Amazons numbers - No idea how Whole Foods is doing - Amazon has enough businesses that don't turn a profit, and closed ultimately, e.g. Prime Now and Fresh in Europe - Amazon logistics was the logical conclusion of Amazon's growth, service providers capacities (from UPS and FedEx over DHL and various postal services) were not sufficient anymore to swallow additional volumes, hence Amazon decided to invest in its own network instead of someone else's (most likely no anti-trust risk here, unless Amazon abuses it's control over allocations and exagerates its share of most profitable shipments, even then it is more of a contract issue and to my knowledge no carrier ever complained more than the usual about all of that)