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There is no shell game–it isn't even that clever. Amazon, Google, Apple, etc., ignore the SEC rules around categorization requirements when reporting revenue. T
by wmeredith 3y ago
There is no shell game–it isn't even that clever. Amazon, Google, Apple, etc., ignore the SEC rules around categorization requirements when reporting revenue. The SEC either doesn't have the will or the agency to enforce its own rules, so nothing is done about it. This has been a thing for decades.
- mamonster 3y agoTo be honest, I still do not fully understand what the claim is. Amazon has 3 segments: US, Europe and AWS. Its 10-Qs/10-Ks disclose all of the information that is required by US GAAP w.r.t what information should be available for a segment. Is the claim that simply stating "The entirety of what happens on the Amazon website in the US is one segment" is wrong? What subsegments would you want to see?
- panarky 3y agoCory can't believe that Amazon's non-AWS units combined have such low profit margins. But he never explains how, exactly, decomposing the non-AWS income statement into separate income statements for each non-AWS activity would somehow uncover hidden income. How could it not show that some activities were profitable, others lost money, and the sum matches the aggregate reported in the 10-K?
- joshribakoff 3y agoPerhaps the suggestion is that Amazon’s retail operation is over-billed by the AWS operation… so on paper it looks like AWS is taking in profits that actually wouldn’t exist if not for the retail revenue
- panarky 3y agoHow would disaggregating the non-AWS segment into smaller sub-segments show that AWS is inflating intracompany billing?