Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has generated in its lifetime

Re:Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has ge... by kgwgk on Saturday May 12, 2018 @03:04AM (#17052870)

If you spend those $2bn in tangible (and in some cases intangible) stuff that is added to the balance sheet, you will still have $2bn of GAAP profit (and will be taxed on it).

There are many ways to compare AAPL and AMZN. Another angle: one is trading at 5 times book value and the other at 25 times book value.

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Re:Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has ge... by tim333 on Saturday May 12, 2018 @07:23AM (#17053535)

Yeah the trick is to spend the $2bn in ways which are expensed rather than added to the balance sheet such as marketing, price promotions and so on.

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Re:Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has ge... by kgwgk on Saturday May 12, 2018 @09:29AM (#17053966)

In you do “price promotions”, the sales are $8bn and the costs are $8bn. If you overspend on marketing your sales are $10bn and your costs are $10bn. It’s true that in those cases the profit is zero, so you won’t pay taxes. But it’s not obvious that this market share gain will result in much higher profits in the future. The trick is not guaranteed to work as intended.

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