Possibly worth observing: they bring in a ton of gross cash, but their revenue is smaller than a lot of Internet operations because their out-lay is high: physical storage, transportation, etc. are all expenses that Internet companies with similar profits don't have to shoulder.
In 2016, they made a profit of $857 million on a revenue of $30.1 billion--- i.e. profit margin of 2%, compared to Alphabet's 9.7% or Facebook's 36%(!!!). It's the number that investors care about, because it tells them how likely they are to get money back out of a business when the invest money into it. It's also a number the company cares about, because it tells them how much of a shock to their fixed costs they could stomach without suddenly finding themselves spending more than they make to keep the doors open.
Amazon's (relatively) razor-thin margins are what make the company so paranoid about costs like wages and benefits; they've seen America's history of burning hulks of older companies wrecked by making pension promises when profits were high that they couldn't honor when profits tailed off.
Imagine if you are Amazon. Do you take the extra billion dollars you earned this month and throw it into another warehouse and more growth opportunities? Or do you keep your size the same and use that money to raise wages?
It's more of question of how they are allocating funds. Either way, the "profit" stays the same.
Amazon has been focused on growth at all costs, and that meant keeping wages razor slim and reinvesting every spare penny.
The real question is: Will slowing their growth investments and paying their employees a fair wage actually help their growth in the long run?
That's the strategy that makes a company more flexible to market shocks. If your revenue is tied up in new buildings, you can react to market shock by decreasing your growth rate. If your revenue is tied up in wages, you can't react to market shock by slashing your wage budget, for (obvious) psychological reasons that half-constructed warehouses are utterly immune to. ;)
Amazon has never cared about net profit, they care about compounded growth through reinvestment of profits. It took Wall Street about 15 years to figure out they should leave Bezos alone.
In 2016, they made a profit of $857 million on a revenue of $30.1 billion--- i.e. profit margin of 2%, compared to Alphabet's 9.7% or Facebook's 36%(!!!). It's the number that investors care about, because it tells them how likely they are to get money back out of a business when the invest money into it. It's also a number the company cares about, because it tells them how much of a shock to their fixed costs they could stomach without suddenly finding themselves spending more than they make to keep the doors open.
Amazon's (relatively) razor-thin margins are what make the company so paranoid about costs like wages and benefits; they've seen America's history of burning hulks of older companies wrecked by making pension promises when profits were high that they couldn't honor when profits tailed off.