“Amazon.com, the world’s largest e-retailer that often straddles the thin line between profits and losses, fell into the red in the second quarter,” Abram Brown reports for Forbes.
“Amazon.com lost $7 million, 2 cents a share, after earning $7 million, 2 cents a share, a year earlier,” Brown reports. “Analysts expected Amazon.com to turn a profit and make 4 cents a share. Revenue increased 22% to $15.7 billion, just meeting analysts’ forecasts.”
Brown reports, “CEO Jeff Bezos, true to his focus on building his company rather than making money, offered no specific reason why Amazon.com struggled in the quarter. What is clear is that the company continues to exist with paper-thin margins. Amazon.com’s operating margin of net sales was a tiny 0.5%.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, Bozos, ask Mikey Dell how making it up in volume goes.
More time focusing on your obviously fragile business, less time whining to the DOJ.
Related article:
Apple beats Street on record quarterly iPhone sales – July 23, 2013
The lights are on, but nobody’s home…
It just makes good business to lose money doesn’t it? Investors obviously love you for it. The DOJ must be so proud giving consumers a lower price at the expense of companies staying in business.
@pete
yes, it makes perfect sense. that’s what the federal government does everyday. spend more than you take in. things go bad, just spend more. never acknowledge or care about what the problem may be. spend until there is no where to borrow. printing money sounds great, but it is based on someone willing to loan you their real $ (read the top of the $1 bill “federal reserve note” what do you think that means?). chinese, canadians, saudis buy bonds and notes because the US government promises to pay. it is paying back the debt by more borrowing. even bezos is not that bizarro.
the preceding rant relates to the post because the DOJ is part of the US government. why would you expect them to side with anyone else other than an entity that operates like them. inside the DOJ, they totally don’t understand what motivates apple. they do understand what motivates bezos. pretty simple.
investors today don’t vote for the success of the company. they vote for making $ on share price. the stock market is not a place to raise capital. it is a cross between ebay and disneyland.
Amazon uses its no profits model to avoid paying corporate income taxes. When they start having to withhold sales taxes, their margins may go further decline even more.
I recently I ordered 2 iPad cases for $31 plus shipping, but after a promitioal discount and”free shipping” the final PX was $16. No worder the margins are near zero.
I wouldn’t buy anything from amazon. Buy local, buy small.
It’s worse than that. Despite stretching payables to 73 days (over 10 weeks) and increasing payables by $1.9 Billion, Amazon lost $800 Million in cash. At this rate, which I expect will continue, Amazon will be out of cash in about one year, with a tremendous payables overhang.
There are only 2 ways to fix this:
A/ Increase revenue. But how do you do that with a commodity retailer that relies on low price leadership? and,
B/ Cut expenses. But how do you do that without alienating customer loyalty? (Ask Dell).
The loss leader Kindle is doing nothing but losing money. It is not driving revenue as it was designed/marketed. Its share continues to shrink into irrelevance.
At nearly $300 this is a stock about to crash.
Up 3% today.
Never mind , amazon will continue rise as there is always dream one day it will earn a lot .
It is great that they lost money! Also, the Kindle Fire is wonderful! Time to buy!
Where’s slimon now with is grossly inaccurate comments about that lawsuit (and his lack of mentioning Amazon’s part in it).
Truly seems that Amazon has been buying its way into its monopoly market share. Amazon’s financials tell an “interesting” story!
I really like Amazon, use them all the time.
Sure, why not? Back before the dot com bubble burst, I bought a ton of $25 DVDs for as little as $5 when all of the deals reel.com was offering were factored in (they were trying to build the biz by losing money).
Then they went bankrupt and I no longer buy from them.
I guess the strategy ‘Don’t worry we’ll make a profit by selling volume’ doesn’t work to well. I wonder how much the Fire contributed to this?
Apple should “fire sale” all books on iBooks for an extended period…sell them all for 99 cents.
Advertise it on TV….iBooks books sale, only on iPad/iPhone! Rip the innards out of Amazon ebooks and bookreaders/tablets in the process. Hello gaping hole Amazon net losses that the street didn’t expect to see, bye bye high flying stock price.
Best $1 billion Apple could spend on “investing” in the longevity of it’s business.
Pipe dream, I know. But it would be the only real justice served by the recent ebook verdict.
This is EXACTLY the point the court did not get…
Apple does not set the minimum price at which it can sell books in its iBooks store. The publishers do.
How an you be convicted of colluding on raising prices if you don’t have control over the minimum prices? Only in the U.S. court system can such a thing happen.
And Amazon keeps propping up its majority position by selling things at a net loss.
No. Let Amazon continue to sell at a loss. The damage to Amazon is greatest that way, and Apple cannot be accused of any wrong doing.
You really think they care about long term investors (bag holders). Of course management has this predetermined sales of their options which they no not the timing of. One day when the clown has finally sold his options or when the curtains finally come off, the pension funds and other clients of the investment house will cry foul and demand the taxpayers bail them out, while the bozos laugh their hearts out.
You sell them at a loss and then they throw the damned tablet in a drawer. Amazon just gets no respect.
Well, when everyone there is finished with their gay weddings maybe they’ll work on updating their product photos to what you actually receive in the mail. Down with big companies. Buy from smaller local companies.
They’re probably planning to start making a profit after they’ve put everyone else out of business.
I like Amazon, wish Samsung and Google lose a crapload.
Wow! I’M more profitable than Amazon!!! I think I’ll go public, sell nothing and promise to sell more of it while keeping my costs under control. P/E = Div/0
Good thing Amazon drove down the price of all those ebooks so it can go out of business and watch the prices go up.
Amazon is a charity funded by the shareholders that provides goods and services below their cost price.
It’s easy to be the #1 Online Retailer when you’re giving the stuff away! It’s not called selling, if you’re doing it at a loss. An idiot can give stuff away, it takes some experience and expertise to sell something.
Amazon has such low margins and investors are happy with such a riculous P/E that Amazon will have to sell every single in item in the world to show a proper ROI. That’s is just a rough calculation. 🙂
There has been so much stupidity written about Amazon in places like Zdnet, BusinessInsider, Forbes etc. Nonsense that amazon will ‘out innovate, out compete’ Apple . this thing is so pervasive that the Amzn stock P.E is over a thousand.
Recently there were articles that Amazon was (supposedly) out innovating apple by designing it’s own chips ( a company that just lost 7 million vs one that just made 6900 million … )
and the classic Bezos is the next steve Jobs:
Forbes:
“I’ve been beating the drum for a while that Jeff Bezos is the greatest entrepreneur alive and, with Steve Jobs‘ passing, his true heir as the greatest business innovator alive. ”
I like buying stuff from Amazon as I like to keep thick hardcover non fiction reference books but seriously Amazon as a TECH rival to Apple because it loses money on Kindles? At their profit earnings rate , even taking the yearly rate to give amazon a chance to even out their loses it will still take amazon several hundred years to make what apple does in a quarter.
You can’t innovate if you have no money.
(how much can apple spend on R&D, and how many small tech companies and patents can it buy with just last quarter’s 6.9 billion?)
Amazon as serious tech rival to Apple is like a corner hotdog stand a serious threat to the world wide McDonald’s chain.
But of course we’ll never get the truth about amazon as a Business from the mainstream press as they seem to love Amazon and hate apple.
Tonight on a TV channels Business Report I watched the half hour program spend a few seconds announcing Amazon’s profit loss and a then later do a long segment on the wonders of Amazon’s new Grocery Service. It even had one of their reporters waste time ORDERING GROCERIES ! and then oh ahing about how wonderful it is (that on the evening the tech ‘giant’ posted a 7 million loss… )! It’s almost as if they are determined to twist the financial quarter story around. Shiiit…. I guess the stock will go UP tomorrow…
They paint a few trucks with the amazon logo. Get a their shyster friends feature them in the news. Proclaim that this is the greatest business idea ever.
If the bozos can push the Feds into prosecuting apple, there is nothing they can do. WS shysterism at its best.
Bozo and the clown crew are banking on the DOJ for a bailout at Apple expense!
Well I think they proved they can’t innovate at all. They did prove they can bribe the DOJ. Looks like that wasn’t very profitable though.
Amazon, the Non-Profit org masquerading as a corporation until it finishes off every small retailer trying to make a living wage. I don’t know what to expect when Amazon controls the vast majority of the retail chain but I imagine it won’t pretty.
I like Amazon too. If I am buying something online (that is not sold at the Apple store), they are as good as it gets.
Their cloud services are pretty cool, and the Kindle does not compete with the iPad.
As for the whole selling mp3’s and eBooks, dont’t really know about that…
When a company BUYS market share in order to kill the competition, they’re going to lose money. That’s part of the plan.
Much as I appreciate Amazon, I NEVER appreciate rogue companies buying market share they’d never get without deliberate cheating. This is where capitalism FAILs. Nice job screwing over the market Amazon. I’ll be using the alternatives, such as Apple, who have respect for ACTUAL competition in the market place.
IOW: Screw you Amazon.