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A comment on Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned. Parent comment

Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by htag on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @10:27PM (#34255523)
> they still have a P&L like any other company

Amazon's quarterly reports have all been good so far (Q3 2022 is the latest). Sales are up 15% YoY, and they are profitable.

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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by imglorp on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @10:47PM (#34255680)
The coldest view would be the holiday buying surge is over and they can shed some excess to pad that margin until next fall.
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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by Spooky23 on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @10:56PM (#34255743)
Wall St demands growth. Their revenue in 2019 was up 20%.

Some of their investments are boat anchors pulling the companies profits down.

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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by htag on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @11:55PM (#34256146)
15% in Q3 2022 is a larger dollar amount than 20% in Q3 2019...
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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by qqtt on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @10:56PM (#34255747)
Simple growth does not indicate that Amazon's quarterly reports are "all good" - Amazon like all other companies are valued based on their future earning potential. Amazon in particular has given very soft revenue and growth guidance compared to what they were earlier expecting, hence, they are one of the worst performing tech stocks right now. In absolute terms, both Amazon and Apple are first place for evaporating 800 billion dollars in market cap EACH over the last year.

Amazon in particular has a longstanding problem of ops costs rising quickly giving the constant potential to eat into profit margins. If a company does not have a path to profitability, at the scale to justify it's market cap, it will continue to lose investor money.

TL:DR; - reducing an earnings report to "sales grew, all good" is wildly misleading.

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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by lapcat on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @11:27PM (#34255954)
> In absolute terms, both Amazon and Apple are first place for evaporating 800 billion dollars in market cap EACH over the last year.

In relative terms, Apple is in first place for the largest market cap in the world of any company, and Amazon is in fifth place.

They're totally fine.

Think of it this way: Amazon is still more than twice as valuable now as it was 5 years ago. Short-term investors will live by the sword or die by the sword, but long-term investors are fine.

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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by CydeWeys on Wednesday January 04, 2023 @11:51PM (#34256113)
> Short-term investors will live by the sword or die by the sword, but long-term investors are fine.

Well, and also some of the employees there, regardless of their length of service. This whole thread is more from the POV of the tech workers getting laid off than investment performance.

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Re:Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Pl... by bumby on Thursday January 05, 2023 @08:45AM (#34259412)
Net profit margin is down 21% and diluted EPS is down 10% though. Increased revenue with decreased profit/earnings would indicate a loss of efficiency. I imagine layoffs are one signal to shareholders that they’re trying to get that efficiency back.
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