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I think the bigger thing is that there is more bad products on Amazon now. I've found myself going to Target or other more specific stores (e.g. Rei for camping supplies, etc) for goods because a lot of the stuff I see on Amazon isn't what I want to buy. For example, I was looking for an adapter for my Macbook and all the adapters were basically just chinese rebrands of the same adapter. I finally gave up and got a Belkin one from Best Buy because I couldn't find a comparable thing on Amazon. I think this is happening a lot and really hurting them in that sector.

I also went to REI recently, same reason. My wife likes target. Both BTW do pickup which gives you a bit of the online convenience in my book (target is a big store to grind through otherwise).

I assume Amazon is trying to jettison retail since it is a sub 5% profit margin business. A lot of work for not much gain.

They would rather be in the AWS/logistics platform/music/video business.

Would they really jettison retail after investing so much in building distribution centers/delivery operations all over the country?

Years ago, removed the filter for searching only for items shipped and sold by Amazon, and the only reason I can think of is because they would rather sell other retailers stuff because they earn a bigger profit margin from platform fees than directly selling to the consumer.

The search filter for Seller: Amazon.com still exists. Free shipping by Amazon filter also still exists.

I think the seller filter is hidden though if no other filter option has been selected first.

> - interestingly, the CFO just said they have too many people at teh company, though he didn't clarify if it was warehouse or developers, I'm guessing its mostly the former and any developer head count downsizing will come from employees who leave due to a share price that is coming down

I concur. I believe those comments were around having scaled up in 20-21 to meet (product sales) demand. There was also a comment along the lines of having organically shed ~100K jobs in '22 Q1. There's just no way that volume is dev/services employees. Beyond that the profits (and more and more revenue) are really coming from the services side of teh house, I'm not sure why they'd cut employee count there.

> - retention of employee's could be interesting to watch as a stock that could very likely be worth less in a years time than it is now would be a big paycut for alot of devs.

Two notes. RSU grants for existing employees are usually 1-2 years out, and the grant price is computed in Q1. That means that the `20 grants are currently down from $3,190 to $2,650 AH. Similar for `21 grants with a planning price of $3,011. Every highly compensated Amazon employee (eg devs) is looking to a real ~12-17% pay cut to RSUs over the next two years. And this is entirely ignoring the ~15% per year stock price growth that gets factored in to the "total comp target" value.

> - their trailing 12M P/E was 124 and their forward 12M P/E is 55, so everyone expects far less growth in the future

This is what really scares me. A current P/E of 45-55 still has plenty of room to fall compared to the rest of the services/it/cloud/ad industry. If growth/earnings remain stalled it's entirely plausible for the stock price to go back down to $1,500-2,000. And that could be fair long term for a services heavy company. But what the heck is that going to do employee comp, retention, and hiring?

Disclaimer: principal at AWS. Everything above is my own opinion and based on public information (eg earnings call & filings) or personal compensation information.

Feels like they’re betting on stock split to diversify their investor pool away from big Wall Street firms and toward retail investors who might be more hopeful of Amazon’s investment potential.

>Interestingly, the CFO just said they have too many people at the company, though he didn't clarify if it was warehouse or developers...

I found one!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31197990

> Maybe people are finally starting to buy local again?

I'm sorry i dont know how to read these reports, but do they have numbers for usage of amazon prime? My guess would be people aren't buying local or online, they just aren't buying a lot of things anymore because of inflation.

> international business was down a fair bit, both in profits and sales, This is something to watch as US sales are probably not a growth area anymore and bulls were watching this areas specifically for growth. Not only fail to grow here but to show a loss is concerning.

Unsurprising as Amazon in the US is basically Alibaba with a better returns policy.

If you don't gain a benefit from the returns policy, you might as well go directly to Alibaba.

Returns and local logistics. Delivery with tracking in 2-5 days is a LOT better than most (all?) alibaba sellers and opens up an entire category of nearly JIT sales. The old 1-2 day delivery was even better and could cover more daily needs. Alibabas multi week china post deliveries can’t replace a quick trip to the local shops, which is what Amazon had spent a decade going after.

> amazon to take a 7.6B loss on Rivian this quarter,

I am not an expert in this so please excuse if these questions sound naive.

1. As this was a "valuation loss", as they called it in their report, could they have deferred it?

2. What purpose does this serve because, again, as it's not as if they lost that money. Is it to gain tax benefits?

3. What happens if/when Rivian's share prices increase in, say, Q3 2022? Do they then report $7.8B in profit?

Not being snarky.

1. Maybe if they wanted to. Accounting at this level is full of grey areas.

2. Accounting.

3. Maybe if they wanted to. Accounting at this level is full of grey areas.

Wow, I had no idea rivian was 172/share / $150B (!!) market cap. That's 3x Ford's market cap. Of course now they are in $30/share range.

At a cap of some 300k for new hires, I don't think they'll have problems with retention.