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Amazon's core business does not make sense. Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money. There is little market share left for them t

Amazon's core business does not make sense. Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money. There is little market share left for them to win, the best they can do to grow is shave expenses. AWS has been their real money maker, but also the explosion of AI and server farms has worked against them in threes ways: there is much more competition on infrastructure, the costs to run infrastructure keep going up, if you're looking for a growth industry there are other more appealing stocks now to park your capital.

novia 8mo ago
they could improve their product search page so it's actually useful
- wodenokoto 8mo ago
  They say one of the reasons supermarkets move isles layout is so people don’t learn to navigate the store and they put milk in the back to make sure people have to walk the isles. The purpose is to get shoppers to look at more stuff and impulse buy. I honestly believe search is bad for the same reason.
- wlesieutre 8mo ago
  It's useful for making sellers pay for promoted product positions
monero-xmr 8mo ago
They could just increase prices. They deliver fast (often same day) and always accept my returns. Add 5% to prices, pure margin.
- autoexec 8mo ago
  They already do. About half the time the prices I see on amazon are higher than buying directly from the manufacturer or from another online store. One example I saw recently was this lego set (https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Penguins-Love-Building-Set/dp/B0GKFZ3D2Y https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Penguins-Love-Building-Set/dp/B0...) which cost over $50 on amazon, I checked lego.com and it was $15.00! (they included it free with a large purchase too!). It's $20 here (https://bricksandminifigsontario.com/products/40886-penguins-in-love-retired-new-sealed https://bricksandminifigsontario.com/products/40886-penguins...)
Aurornis 8mo ago
> Amazon's core business does not make sense. Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money. Net profit margins for retail are only around 3% across the industry. Amazon isn't actually doing anything unusual in that regard. Retail is just a very low profit margin business whether it's physical or online. These numbers are always confusing to those of us in the tech world where SaaS net profit margins are always very high.
- legitster 8mo ago
  This is correct, but it doesn't explain why Amazon would have a 2x market cap over Walmart when they both roughly make the same revenue. You have to believe that Amazon is poised for much higher growth than they are to justify their current stock price.
  - tyre 8mo ago
    These are different businesses. Walmart has a massive retail footprint, where Amazon does not. Amazon’s huge 3p seller network means it can offer advertising as a revenue stream in a way Walmart can’t compete with.
  - nikkev 8mo ago
    Their business models are increasingly converging with both generative revenue through seller fees, subscriptions, and advertising. Amazon is ahead in most of these areas and also has the higher margin revenue from AWS. Amazon also has a large base of prime subscribers they can sell incremental services to.
  - jcheng 8mo ago
    The revenue curves do indeed look a bit different: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=revenue&axis=single&comp=WMT:AMZN https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=revenu... Even more so if you compare EBITDA: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=ebitda&axis=single&comp=WMT:AMZN https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=ebitda...
zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
Their profit margin on retail is similar to other discount retailers like Walmart. Retail just doesn’t have huge margins.
taeric 8mo ago
I am not so sure this is an accurate analysis? Notably, a major thing that kept it so that retail made no money, was the massive expense of expanding the retail operations. That is, expanding retail footprint is a massive cost. And you have to expand if you want to reach more customers. This is different from AWS where your reach is essentially "all of the internet" for anything that you launch. But this really just meant that reinvesting the revenue from AWS was harder for them to do, compared to revenue from retail. As a result, they didn't. Not nearly as aggressively.
kypro 8mo ago
Depends how you define their "core business" I suppose. You're right, but their retail business does support the bulk of their ad business which is extremely profitable. Arguably it might actually make sense for them to run their retail business as a loss leader to support their high-margin ad business.
coredog64 8mo ago
> Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money You misunderstand the point of retail. It's now a marketplace where they use their name recognition and (alleged) consumer friendliness to collect fees from sellers. It costs to list, it costs to do FBA, and it costs to run ads so that your products appear in search results. Amazon ads is incredibly profitable. That's also why Prime has such a grab bag of benefits. By keeping Prime membership sticky, the overall value of that marketplace supports the fees charged to sellers.
evanjacobs 8mo ago
> There is little market share left for them to win Despite controlling about 40% of US online retail, Amazon only has about an 8% share of total US retail. There’s still plenty of room to grow here. https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-us-ecommerce-sales-this-year https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 8mo ago
  I'm down to about one Walmart trip per year. It may have been as many as 3 years since I've been inside Target. Kmart is a dusty memory. On my last Walmart trip, it is a shabby caricature of what I remember from the early 2000s (maybe even on up into 2011 or 2012. I can't be sure, but I believe aisles have been made wider so they could fit fewer shelves and keep those looking fuller. What fills them is the cheapest looking junk I have ever seen, and I had no favorable opinion of Walmart's goods to start with. Truly much of it looks like the sort of trinkety crap you would have found at flea markets and gas stations years ago. Target was (3 years ago) still worse, I think they do most of their ordering off of Temu. If there is something I might prefer to not wait on Amazon for, I will not find it at Walmart even if I remember Walmart once carrying that product. This is without fail. Each new (rare) trip to Walmart reinforces the lesson. I have never been fond of Walmart's grocery department. I suspect (long ago) that they were able to sell produce 1 cent cheaper than anyone else by buying the least-wanted, unsold inventory from agricultural distributors, and the quality always reflected that theory. I could buy strawberries from Walmart, buy them again from the local grocery chain 10 minutes later, put them in the fridge simultaneously. And the Walmart-bought produce was slimy the next day, the grocery store produce not (unless I stacked the Walmart clamshell on the grocery store one... cross-contamination). Worse still, they have reduced their personnel to skeleton crews, all shifts. The stores tend to look like they were looted after hurricanes. I do not know how anyone shops at Walmart, and it scares me that if my circumstances were less agreeable I might be forced to shop there too. Walmart might aim for stealing marketshare from Dollar General as a growth strategy, the overlap must be nearly absolute.
- KittenInABox 8mo ago
  What is there for Amazon to grow? They're closing their physical fresh stores etc. Is the intention to compete with Walmart and Dollar General?
mfrye0 8mo ago
Relevant data point on AWS - GCP is giving out a ton of cloud credits to startups. On average $100k in comparison to $10k-20k from AWS. Before Claude Code, a full cloud migration could easily be a couple months. We migrated our whole stack to GCP in about a week. It's trivial to switch clouds now with K8 stack and Claude Code.
criddell 8mo ago
> There is little market share left for them to win, the best they can do to grow is shave expenses. I think Amazon netted something like $70 billion last year. What's the problem with them just staying the course and earning tens of billions of dollars in profit year-after-year-after-year?
- saulpw 8mo ago
  Number must go up. It's a problem with capitalism in general.
tracerbulletx 8mo ago
Trying to make every business have software margins is going to destroy society.
- burnt-resistor 8mo ago
  Private equity, consultants, and the pedophile class are eagerly awaiting it.
aaronsung 8mo ago
It's not that bad. From a finance and accounting perspective, Amazon’s retail business provides strong synergies with its cloud services. Although the retail segment has a relatively low net profit margin, it generates stable and substantial cash flow for the company. In contrast, cloud services are highly profitable but require significant upfront investment in hardware, and the associated asset depreciation is substantial. By combining these two businesses, Amazon can achieve a more balanced capital structure. Compared to other cloud service providers such as Oracle, Amazon can maintain a lower debt-to-equity ratio, reduce its debt burden, and sustain stronger overall financial health. At the same time, it can achieve higher overall profit margins compared to traditional retailers like Walmart.

novia 8mo ago

they could improve their product search page so it's actually useful

wodenokoto 8mo ago
They say one of the reasons supermarkets move isles layout is so people don’t learn to navigate the store and they put milk in the back to make sure people have to walk the isles. The purpose is to get shoppers to look at more stuff and impulse buy. I honestly believe search is bad for the same reason.
wlesieutre 8mo ago
It's useful for making sellers pay for promoted product positions

monero-xmr 8mo ago

They could just increase prices. They deliver fast (often same day) and always accept my returns. Add 5% to prices, pure margin.

autoexec 8mo ago
They already do. About half the time the prices I see on amazon are higher than buying directly from the manufacturer or from another online store. One example I saw recently was this lego set (https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Penguins-Love-Building-Set/dp/B0GKFZ3D2Y https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Penguins-Love-Building-Set/dp/B0...) which cost over $50 on amazon, I checked lego.com and it was $15.00! (they included it free with a large purchase too!). It's $20 here (https://bricksandminifigsontario.com/products/40886-penguins-in-love-retired-new-sealed https://bricksandminifigsontario.com/products/40886-penguins...)

Aurornis 8mo ago

> Amazon's core business does not make sense. Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money. Net profit margins for retail are only around 3% across the industry. Amazon isn't actually doing anything unusual in that regard. Retail is just a very low profit margin business whether it's physical or online. These numbers are always confusing to those of us in the tech world where SaaS net profit margins are always very high.

legitster 8mo ago
This is correct, but it doesn't explain why Amazon would have a 2x market cap over Walmart when they both roughly make the same revenue. You have to believe that Amazon is poised for much higher growth than they are to justify their current stock price.
- tyre 8mo ago
  These are different businesses. Walmart has a massive retail footprint, where Amazon does not. Amazon’s huge 3p seller network means it can offer advertising as a revenue stream in a way Walmart can’t compete with.
- nikkev 8mo ago
  Their business models are increasingly converging with both generative revenue through seller fees, subscriptions, and advertising. Amazon is ahead in most of these areas and also has the higher margin revenue from AWS. Amazon also has a large base of prime subscribers they can sell incremental services to.
- jcheng 8mo ago
  The revenue curves do indeed look a bit different: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=revenue&axis=single&comp=WMT:AMZN https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=revenu... Even more so if you compare EBITDA: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=ebitda&axis=single&comp=WMT:AMZN https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=ebitda...

zeroonetwothree 8mo ago

Their profit margin on retail is similar to other discount retailers like Walmart. Retail just doesn’t have huge margins.

taeric 8mo ago

I am not so sure this is an accurate analysis? Notably, a major thing that kept it so that retail made no money, was the massive expense of expanding the retail operations. That is, expanding retail footprint is a massive cost. And you have to expand if you want to reach more customers. This is different from AWS where your reach is essentially "all of the internet" for anything that you launch. But this really just meant that reinvesting the revenue from AWS was harder for them to do, compared to revenue from retail. As a result, they didn't. Not nearly as aggressively.

kypro 8mo ago

Depends how you define their "core business" I suppose. You're right, but their retail business does support the bulk of their ad business which is extremely profitable. Arguably it might actually make sense for them to run their retail business as a loss leader to support their high-margin ad business.

coredog64 8mo ago

> Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money You misunderstand the point of retail. It's now a marketplace where they use their name recognition and (alleged) consumer friendliness to collect fees from sellers. It costs to list, it costs to do FBA, and it costs to run ads so that your products appear in search results. Amazon ads is incredibly profitable. That's also why Prime has such a grab bag of benefits. By keeping Prime membership sticky, the overall value of that marketplace supports the fees charged to sellers.

evanjacobs 8mo ago

> There is little market share left for them to win Despite controlling about 40% of US online retail, Amazon only has about an 8% share of total US retail. There’s still plenty of room to grow here. https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-us-ecommerce-sales-this-year https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-...

NoMoreNicksLeft 8mo ago
I'm down to about one Walmart trip per year. It may have been as many as 3 years since I've been inside Target. Kmart is a dusty memory. On my last Walmart trip, it is a shabby caricature of what I remember from the early 2000s (maybe even on up into 2011 or 2012. I can't be sure, but I believe aisles have been made wider so they could fit fewer shelves and keep those looking fuller. What fills them is the cheapest looking junk I have ever seen, and I had no favorable opinion of Walmart's goods to start with. Truly much of it looks like the sort of trinkety crap you would have found at flea markets and gas stations years ago. Target was (3 years ago) still worse, I think they do most of their ordering off of Temu. If there is something I might prefer to not wait on Amazon for, I will not find it at Walmart even if I remember Walmart once carrying that product. This is without fail. Each new (rare) trip to Walmart reinforces the lesson. I have never been fond of Walmart's grocery department. I suspect (long ago) that they were able to sell produce 1 cent cheaper than anyone else by buying the least-wanted, unsold inventory from agricultural distributors, and the quality always reflected that theory. I could buy strawberries from Walmart, buy them again from the local grocery chain 10 minutes later, put them in the fridge simultaneously. And the Walmart-bought produce was slimy the next day, the grocery store produce not (unless I stacked the Walmart clamshell on the grocery store one... cross-contamination). Worse still, they have reduced their personnel to skeleton crews, all shifts. The stores tend to look like they were looted after hurricanes. I do not know how anyone shops at Walmart, and it scares me that if my circumstances were less agreeable I might be forced to shop there too. Walmart might aim for stealing marketshare from Dollar General as a growth strategy, the overlap must be nearly absolute.
KittenInABox 8mo ago
What is there for Amazon to grow? They're closing their physical fresh stores etc. Is the intention to compete with Walmart and Dollar General?

mfrye0 8mo ago

Relevant data point on AWS - GCP is giving out a ton of cloud credits to startups. On average $100k in comparison to $10k-20k from AWS. Before Claude Code, a full cloud migration could easily be a couple months. We migrated our whole stack to GCP in about a week. It's trivial to switch clouds now with K8 stack and Claude Code.

criddell 8mo ago

> There is little market share left for them to win, the best they can do to grow is shave expenses. I think Amazon netted something like $70 billion last year. What's the problem with them just staying the course and earning tens of billions of dollars in profit year-after-year-after-year?

saulpw 8mo ago
Number must go up. It's a problem with capitalism in general.

tracerbulletx 8mo ago

Trying to make every business have software margins is going to destroy society.

burnt-resistor 8mo ago
Private equity, consultants, and the pedophile class are eagerly awaiting it.

aaronsung 8mo ago

It's not that bad. From a finance and accounting perspective, Amazon’s retail business provides strong synergies with its cloud services. Although the retail segment has a relatively low net profit margin, it generates stable and substantial cash flow for the company. In contrast, cloud services are highly profitable but require significant upfront investment in hardware, and the associated asset depreciation is substantial. By combining these two businesses, Amazon can achieve a more balanced capital structure. Compared to other cloud service providers such as Oracle, Amazon can maintain a lower debt-to-equity ratio, reduce its debt burden, and sustain stronger overall financial health. At the same time, it can achieve higher overall profit margins compared to traditional retailers like Walmart.