Research archive for AMZN

As mentioned in a previous letter, we just had Amazon Prime Day on the 21st and 22nd of June. I thought it would be worthwhile to delve into some more details of what Amazon Prime Day actually is.

Amazon released its first quarter numbers on Thursday, smashing analyst expectations on both the top and bottom-line. The e-commerce behemoth continues to benefit from the surge in online shopping as demand remains robust for deliveries, the cloud business and advertising.

Amazon has a bad reputation in some circles. The most common criticism is about their labour practices. They pay too little and expect too much. When you employ 1.3 million people, there are bound to be a few grumpy employees?

In recent newsletters we have spoken about how the tech titans are busy diversifying their revenue streams to create future growth. Did you see that Amazon reached an agreement to pay $10 billion over 10 years for the exclusive rights to broadcast Thursday night NFL games? That is a lot of money for an e-tail company to spend on content! Amazon, of course, has a big long term plan.

Yesterday I wrote about Amazon and its ability to grow successful businesses fast by targeting their huge client base. Here is an example of a business they are building using their own large workforce instead. Amazon is launching its medical care business for its employees and other companies across the US.

Yesterday I spoke about the leadership changes at Amazon, today I will cover their spectacular results. Revenues increased a whopping 44% to $126 billion - the consensus expected $120 billion. That revenue translated into operating income of $6.8 billion for the quarter. Not too long ago, Amazon used to lose money during a quarter. More than half of those profits ($3.5 billion) came from Amazon Web Services.

Along with their results, Amazon had some big news for us last night. Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO and will be replaced by Andy Jassy who was previously the head of Amazon Web Services. Under his reign AWS has become the star of the Amazon show.

Amazon is said to be in talks to buy podcast startup Wondery in a deal worth $300 million. Wondery's last funding round was in June 2019, where the company raised $10 million at a $100 million valuation. This was the largest funding round for an independent podcasting company at the time. Today Wondery is the last large independent podcaster.

You would be forgiven to believe that Amazon dominates the global online retail market. In reality, they are only prominent in 12 countries.

We are quite used to this by now, tech companies getting fined, especially in Europe. This time it was Amazon's turn to take the heat. The European Competition Commission said it suspects Amazon of violating antitrust rules by using data from third party sellers to boost their own products. Basically, Amazon was checking what items were selling best from their third party retailers and then selling those items themselves. Often the Amazon version would be top of the search list.

Hey ho, here is another company earnings report for you. E-commerce giant Amazon was out with third quarter numbers last night. As expected, they delivered some eye-popping gains.

Google's gaming streaming service called Stadia has been well documented in the media and in our daily newsletter. The service aims to become the 'Netflix of gaming'. Now Amazon have joined the race after unveiling Luna last week.

I have been following Amazon's foray into India very closely. I went to India in 2017 and it is quite obvious that online retail could explode there. Not to mention a population of 1.2 billion people.

Amazon reported a very good set of quarterly numbers, easily beating the streets expectations. This was thanks to more people shopping online and more businesses migrating to the cloud. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant has had to invest more money in its people and its supply chain to ensure worker safety as well as to alleviate supply chain pressures due to a big surge in demand.

Last week Amazon raised $10 billion in the bond market at a record low rate for corporate America. Included in the bond offering was 30-year and 40-year debt. The record low rates and long timeframe show how confident investors are in the long term future of the company.