Step one: Report quarter that doesn’t meet expectations. Step two: Don’t care about the earnings. Step three: Watch stock reach record high.
Via: Rick Wilking / Reuters
It seems unlikely that after reporting a miss on quarterly earnings, a company's stock would end up hitting a record high the following day.
And yet, that's basically what happened to Amazon after it reported its second-quarter earnings last week. And today, the company said it would hire another 5,000 people to work in its fulfillment centers, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Then again, Amazon is not known for falling into the norms that define most companies — especially its tech titan counterparts Google, Facebook, and Apple. Much of that can be attributed to CEO Jeff Bezos, who, despite the pressure of analysts and the press, has essentially stayed the course and continued to push his company to branch into new businesses — regardless of whether they will make the company a lot of money or not. Most recently, Amazon started to branch into same-day delivery for groceries.
*Editor's note: We cannot read Bezos' mind, so it's possible he cares very deeply about all these things. However, and for the better too, it certainly doesn't seem that way.
Profits
Via: Gus Ruelas / Reuters
Amazon generates billions of dollars in revenue every single quarter — $15.7 billion this most recent quarter, up from $12.8 billion in the same quarter last year — basically rivaling many of the top tech companies in the United States.
And yet, Amazon still manages to make only a small sliver of profit and often reports a net loss, given the razor-thin margins of Amazon's online delivery business.