Amazon, the company which loves to make no profit, has made no profit. In its quarterly results, released today, the company has revealed it lost $7m for the months of April to June, down from a profit of $7m for the same three months in 2012. That’s compared to total revenue of $15.7bn for the quarter, up by 22 per cent year on year.
Of course, this being Amazon, the company’s stock is actually 1.3 per cent higher than it was at the close of trading yesterday. Immediately after the news was released, it fell to a low of 299, having closed at 303.4 the day before; but since then it’s risen inexorably, and it’s now at 307.8. That’s because, to quote Matt Yglesias, the Slate blogger who was cited by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a letter to shareholders, “Amazon, as far as I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers”. The company’s owners seem a unique group of people on Wall Street: those who don’t actually want to make any money.
Of course, that’s not actually particularly likely. Instead, the operating loss probably explains the moves we’ve seen in the last month or so to tighten up margins at the company. First prices started to rise on small-press books, then the company re-instated delivery charges; it now looks like that was less a desire to start earning profit, and more a realisation that margins had dropped too low for even a company like Amazon.
But while margins are low, revenues are up, up, up. Which means the company’s primary goal – of becoming the biggest in the world, profit be damned – is ticking along nicely. As for what happens when they do, well, do we really care? We’ve all got such cheap hardbacks and CDs, it’s almost not worth it.