Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) — Company Research

Last Updated: 16 August 2026

Amazon.com, Inc. is three very different businesses wearing one ticker. It is the largest online retailer in the Western world, it owns the largest public cloud platform on earth, and it now runs an advertising operation approaching an $80bn annual run-rate. In the twelve months to 30 June 2026 the group turned over $775.7bn and produced $93.7bn of operating income. It is also, right now, one of the most capital-hungry companies in corporate history: management has guided to roughly $220bn of capital expenditure in 2026 alone, and trailing free cash flow has turned negative as a result. This report sets out what Amazon reported, what it has committed to spend, and where the pressure points sit. No analyst opinions, no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Exchange and ticker	NASDAQ: AMZN
Sector	Consumer Discretionary — e-commerce, cloud infrastructure and digital advertising
Headquarters	410 Terry Avenue North, Seattle, Washington, USA
Founded	1994
CEO / Leadership	Andy Jassy, President and Chief Executive Officer. Jeff Bezos remains Executive Chair. Matt Garman leads AWS; Douglas Herrington leads Worldwide Amazon Stores
Employees	1,595,000 full-time and part-time employees as at 30 June 2026 (excludes contractors and temporary personnel)
Revenue (FY2025)	$716,924m net sales, up 12.4 per cent year on year
Revenue (TTM to 30 Jun 2026)	$775,680m
Operating income (FY2025)	$79,975m (11.2 per cent operating margin)
Net income (FY2025)	$77,670m, GAAP diluted EPS $7.17
Market capitalisation	Approximately $2,833bn at the 14 August 2026 close of $262.65
Shares outstanding	10,783m common shares at 30 June 2026
Dividend	None. Amazon has never declared or paid a cash dividend on its common stock
Last reported period	Q2 2026, quarter ended 30 June 2026, released 30 July 2026

Useful ChartsView tools while you read: Live Charts for the price action referenced below, and the Economic Calendar for the macro releases that move large-cap consumer and technology names.

2. Bull Case and Bear Case

Bull Case

• AWS has re-accelerated hard: AWS grew 36.7 per cent year on year in Q2 2026 to $42,232m, the fastest rate in eighteen quarters, with operating margin at 39.4 per cent and segment operating income of $16,621m. Remaining performance obligations stood at $496bn, up from $364bn only one quarter earlier.
• Three profit engines, not one: FY2025 operating income of $79,975m came from North America ($29,619m), International ($4,750m) and AWS ($45,606m). The International segment, loss-making as recently as 2022, is now profitable, and advertising services revenue reached $68,635m in FY2025 and grew 26 per cent in Q2 2026.
• Operating leverage is real: operating income rose from $12,248m in FY2022 to $79,975m in FY2025 on revenue growth of 39 per cent over the same period. Trailing twelve-month operating income now stands at $93,712m against $37,576m in the first half of 2025 alone.
• Custom silicon is scaling: management disclosed that the AWS AI business and the AWS custom-chip business each exceeded a $25bn annualised run-rate in Q2 2026, both growing at triple-digit rates, with Trainium capacity contracted by Anthropic and OpenAI under multi-year, multi-gigawatt commitments.
• Balance sheet capacity to fund the build: Amazon held $78,213m of cash and $44,775m of current marketable securities at 30 June 2026 against $132,224m of borrowings, and generated $161,403m of operating cash flow over the trailing twelve months.

Bear Case

• Free cash flow has gone negative: trailing twelve-month operating cash flow of $161,403m was more than absorbed by $173,028m of purchases of property and equipment, leaving free cash flow of minus $11,625m. The 2026 capital expenditure plan was raised from roughly $200bn to roughly $220bn during the year.
• Depreciation is compounding into the P and L: trailing twelve-month depreciation and amortisation reached $75,200m, against $58,562m for the equivalent period a year earlier. Every data centre placed in service adds a fixed charge that must be earned back.
• Debt has more than doubled in six months: total borrowings rose from $68,396m at 31 December 2025 to $132,224m at 30 June 2026 as Amazon funded the AI build with the bond market. Interest cost now scales with the capex plan.
• Rivals are growing their clouds faster: Google Cloud grew 82 per cent year on year in Q2 2026 to $24.77bn and Microsoft's Azure was growing at around 39 to 40 per cent, both from smaller bases but both above AWS on a percentage basis for much of the past two years.
• Unresolved regulatory overhang: the US Federal Trade Commission's monopolisation case is scheduled for trial in early 2027, and the European Commission issued a preliminary view in June 2026 that AWS should be designated under the Digital Markets Act.

3. Business Segments

Amazon reports three operating segments. The FY2025 split, from the audited financial statements, is set out below.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
North America	59.5 per cent ($426,305m in FY2025)	Retail sales of consumer products, advertising and subscriptions in the United States, Canada and Mexico, including Amazon-branded physical stores. FY2025 segment operating income $29,619m.
International	22.6 per cent ($161,894m in FY2025)	The same retail, advertising and subscription activities outside North America, spanning the UK, Germany, Japan, India and other export markets. FY2025 segment operating income $4,750m.
AWS	18.0 per cent ($128,725m in FY2025)	Amazon Web Services: compute, storage, database, networking and AI infrastructure sold to enterprises, governments and startups. FY2025 segment operating income $45,606m, or 57 per cent of group operating income.

Amazon also discloses revenue by product line. In FY2025 that was: online stores $268,036m, third-party seller services $172,162m, AWS $128,725m, advertising services $68,635m, subscription services $49,619m, physical stores $22,561m and other $5,935m. Advertising was running at roughly a $79bn annualised rate on the Q2 2026 quarterly figure of $19,809m.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Amazon earns on three distinct economic models. In retail it takes a gross margin on goods it owns and a commission plus fulfilment fee on goods sold by third parties, and third-party seller services alone produced $172,162m in FY2025. In cloud it rents metered compute and storage at a 39.4 per cent segment operating margin. In advertising it monetises the purchase intent of shoppers already on its properties at very high incremental margin. The mix matters: AWS and advertising together were roughly 27.5 per cent of FY2025 revenue but carry the great majority of the group's profit.

What protects it. The retail moat is logistics density. Amazon has spent two decades building a delivery network whose per-parcel cost falls as volume rises, and which competitors would have to replicate at scale before they could match delivery promises. Same-day grocery now reaches more than 2,300 US cities and towns. The AWS moat is switching cost and gravity: enterprise data, once resident in a cloud, is expensive and risky to move, and the remaining performance obligation balance of $496bn is contractual evidence of that lock-in. The advertising moat is first-party purchase data that Apple's privacy changes did not touch, because the transaction happens inside Amazon's own walls.

Where the model is being stress-tested. The current capital cycle is unlike anything Amazon has run before. Purchases of property and equipment were $131,819m in FY2025 and $98,411m in the first half of 2026 alone. Management has explicitly said capacity will not meet demand through 2027, which is a statement about scarcity rather than weakness, but it also means the depreciation charge is being locked in years ahead of the revenue that is meant to service it.

Capital allocation. Amazon pays no dividend and has historically preferred reinvestment to distribution. The 2026 change is that reinvestment is now partly debt-funded: borrowings rose from $68,396m at the end of 2025 to $132,224m by 30 June 2026.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Amazon's audited annual reports on Form 10-K and its quarterly earnings releases on Form 8-K. Dollar amounts are in millions unless stated.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	469,822	—	$3.24	$3.24†	Nil‡	$48,744m
FY2022	513,983	+9.4%	$(0.27)	$(0.27)†	Nil‡	$67,150m
FY2023	574,785	+11.8%	$2.90	$2.90†	Nil‡	$58,314m
FY2024	637,959	+11.0%	$5.53	$5.53†	Nil‡	$52,623m
FY2025	716,924	+12.4%	$7.17	$7.17†	Nil‡	$65,648m

† Amazon does not publish a non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share measure in any of its quarterly or annual releases. GAAP diluted EPS is repeated in the Adjusted EPS column so the table remains comparable. All per-share figures are stated on a post-split basis following the 20-for-1 stock split effective 6 June 2022.
‡ Amazon has never declared or paid a cash dividend on its common stock.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	200,606	$5.75†	$5.75
Q1 2026	181,519	$2.78†	$2.78
Q4 2025	213,386	$1.95†	$1.95
Q3 2025	180,169	$1.95†	$1.95
Q2 2025	167,702	$1.68†	$1.68
FY2025 total	716,924	$7.17†	$7.17

Two observations on the quarterly table. First, Q2 2026 GAAP diluted EPS of $5.75 is not a clean operating number: net income of $62,647m in the quarter included roughly $53.4bn of pre-tax non-operating other income, principally an unrealised gain on Amazon's Anthropic investment, against operating income of only $27,461m. Second, the year-on-year operating improvement is genuine even after stripping that out, with Q2 2026 operating income of $27,461m against $19,171m a year earlier, an increase of 43 per cent.

Cash flow and balance sheet, twelve months to 30 June 2026: operating cash flow $161,403m, purchases of property and equipment $173,028m, giving free cash flow of minus $11,625m. Depreciation and amortisation $75,200m. At 30 June 2026 the balance sheet carried $128,894m of long-term debt, $3,330m of current portion, $78,213m of cash and cash equivalents and $44,775m of current marketable securities.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately $2,833bn (10,786m shares at the 14 August 2026 close of $262.65). The shares briefly crossed $3 trillion intraday on 3 August 2026.
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	Approximately 21.1x ($262.65 divided by trailing twelve-month diluted EPS of $12.43). This is flattered: the trailing figure includes roughly $53.4bn of pre-tax non-operating gains booked in Q2 2026 on the Anthropic investment. On FY2025 reported EPS of $7.17 the same price is 36.6x.
P/E (forward)	Approximately 25.2x on consensus forward earnings per share of about $10.40, which excludes the non-recurring investment gain in the trailing figure.
P/S (TTM)	3.65x (market cap $2,833bn divided by trailing twelve-month revenue of $775,680m)
Enterprise value	Approximately $2,842bn (market cap $2,833bn plus total borrowings $132.2bn, being $128,894m long-term and $3,330m current, less cash and current marketable securities of $123.0bn, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Operating and finance lease liabilities are excluded; including them would raise enterprise value materially.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 16.8x (enterprise value $2,842bn divided by trailing twelve-month EBITDA of $168,912m; EBITDA is trailing operating income of $93,712m plus depreciation and amortisation of $75,200m, using the wider cash-flow-statement figure)
P/FCF	n/m — trailing twelve-month free cash flow was negative at minus $11,625m (operating cash flow $161,403m less purchases of property and equipment $173,028m). The multiple cannot be computed on a negative denominator.
52-week high	$287.20 intraday on 3 August 2026 (highest closing price $284.02, also 3 August 2026)
52-week low	$196.00 intraday in February 2026 (lowest closing price $198.79 on 13 February 2026)
Short interest (% of float)	Approximately 1.0 per cent — 98.4m shares short against a free float of about 9,810m shares, settlement date 31 July 2026
Days to cover	Approximately 2.1 days on average daily volume, same settlement date

7. What Are They Building

Silicon. Trainium2 is fully subscribed with 1.4 million chips landed and now serves the majority of Amazon Bedrock inference. Trainium3 is in production and Trainium4, promising roughly six times the FP4 compute of Trainium3, is slated for 2027. On the general-purpose side, Graviton5 reached general availability and is used by the overwhelming majority of the largest EC2 customers. Project Rainier, a cluster of more than 500,000 Trainium2 chips, is the compute base Anthropic uses to train Claude.

Models and agents. The Nova family now spans Nova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Pro and the multilingual Nova 2 Sonic, with Nova Forge for customer-specific fine-tuning and Nova Act for agents that operate software interfaces. Bedrock AgentCore added payments, web search, policy, evaluation and memory primitives during 2026.

Consumer AI. Alexa+ rolled out to Germany, Austria, France and Brazil during the second quarter of 2026 and reached Australia in early access in August 2026, its first Asia-Pacific market. Alexa and the Rufus shopping assistant have been merged into a single shopping experience.

Connectivity. Amazon Leo, previously Project Kuiper, entered enterprise beta in April 2026 with Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, JetBlue and NASA among the named partners. Amazon agreed to acquire Globalstar for $11.6bn in April 2026 to secure direct-to-device spectrum.

Robotics and logistics. The next-generation Proteus autonomous mobile robot handles loads to 1,300 pounds and takes conversational instruction. Amazon acquired Fauna Robotics in March 2026. Its Zoox subsidiary received the first NHTSA Part 555 exemption permitting paid robotaxi rides.

Advertising. The Ads Agent campaign-building tool expanded to eleven countries during 2026, supporting an advertising line growing 26 per cent year on year at a roughly $79bn annualised run-rate.

8. Competitive Landscape

Amazon competes on three fronts at once, so the peer set spans cloud, retail and advertising. Market capitalisations are as at the 14 August 2026 close.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)	Approximately $3,679bn	Azure was growing at approximately 39 to 40 per cent year on year in its most recent reported quarter, with Microsoft Cloud revenue above $51.5bn in the quarter. Holds roughly 21 per cent of global cloud infrastructure spend on Synergy Research's Q1 2026 estimate.
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)	Approximately $4,230bn	Google Cloud revenue of $24.77bn in Q2 2026, up 82 per cent year on year, the fastest growth of the three hyperscalers; group revenue $119.80bn, up 24.2 per cent. Roughly 14 per cent of global cloud infrastructure spend.
Walmart (NYSE: WMT)	Approximately $917bn	E-commerce sales grew 26 per cent year on year and now represent about 23 per cent of net sales, a fifteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit e-commerce growth. It is the only physical retailer operating at Amazon's scale in the United States.
Alibaba (NYSE: BABA)	Approximately $297bn	Cloud Intelligence Group revenue of RMB41,626m, roughly $6.0bn, up 38 per cent year on year, with AI product revenue posting an eleventh consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth. The principal cloud and marketplace competitor in China and increasingly in South-East Asia.

On Synergy Research's Q1 2026 estimate AWS held roughly 28 per cent of global cloud infrastructure spend against 21 per cent for Azure and 14 per cent for Google Cloud. AWS retains the largest share but has, for much of the past two years, grown more slowly in percentage terms than either challenger, a gap that narrowed sharply with the 36.7 per cent print in Q2 2026.

9. Insider Activity

Andy Jassy has been President and Chief Executive Officer since July 2021, and Jeff Bezos, the founder, continues as Executive Chair. Both are among the sellers listed below. Every 2026 transaction identified in SEC Form 4 filings was a disposal executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan; no open-market purchases by executives were found. For very large long-tenured shareholdings, scheduled plan sales are the normal mechanism for diversification and carry limited signalling value on their own.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Jeff Bezos	3 Aug 2026	Sale	1,209,649	$286.41	Approximately $346.5m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 14 Nov 2025
Douglas Herrington (CEO, Worldwide Amazon Stores)	3 Aug 2026	Sale	1,000	$278.39	Approximately $278k	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 10 Nov 2025
Douglas Herrington (CEO, Worldwide Amazon Stores)	1 Jul 2026	Sale	1,000	$239.77	Approximately $240k	Rule 10b5-1
Andy Jassy (President and CEO)	21 May 2026	Sale	5,667	Not disclosed in filing summary	Not disclosed	Rule 10b5-1
Shelley Reynolds (VP, Worldwide Controller)	21 May 2026	Sale	543	$265.01	Approximately $144k	Rule 10b5-1
Matt Garman (CEO, AWS)	15 May 2026	Sale, four tranches	Not itemised	Not itemised	Approximately $6.03m	Rule 10b5-1
Andy Jassy (President and CEO)	17 Apr 2026	Sale	31,000	$255.00	Approximately $7.9m	Rule 10b5-1

10. Key Risks

• Capital intensity and negative free cash flow: the 2026 capital expenditure plan of roughly $220bn, raised from roughly $200bn during the year on higher memory-chip costs, has already pushed trailing free cash flow to minus $11,625m. If cloud demand disappoints, the spend is largely already committed.
• Depreciation drag on future margins: trailing twelve-month depreciation and amortisation of $75,200m is up 28 per cent year on year. Data centre assets placed in service create a fixed charge regardless of utilisation, and the charge lands ahead of the revenue meant to cover it.
• Leverage has risen sharply: total borrowings roughly doubled from $68,396m at 31 December 2025 to $132,224m at 30 June 2026. Amazon retains substantial liquidity, but the interest burden now scales with a capex programme whose payback period is unproven.
• Antitrust and regulatory exposure: the FTC's monopolisation case is scheduled for trial in early 2027, and the European Commission signalled in June 2026 a preliminary view that AWS should be designated under the Digital Markets Act, which carries turnover-based penalty exposure and structural remedies as possible outcomes.
• Cloud competition: Google Cloud grew 82 per cent year on year in Q2 2026 and Azure around 39 to 40 per cent. AWS's re-acceleration to 36.7 per cent narrows but does not close that gap, and enterprise multi-cloud procurement makes share defensible only on price and capability.
• Satellite programme execution: Amazon Leo had roughly 210 to 241 satellites in orbit against an FCC requirement of 1,618 by 30 July 2026 and has applied for a two-year extension. A refusal would put licensed spectrum at risk.
• Labour relations and restructuring: approximately 30,000 corporate roles have been cut since October 2025, including around 16,000 announced in January 2026, and Amazon settled an NLRB-mediated dispute with the Teamsters in March 2026. Both carry execution, morale and cost risk.
• Currency and input costs: Q3 2026 guidance embeds roughly 80 basis points of unfavourable foreign exchange impact, and memory-chip cost inflation was cited by management as the direct reason for raising the capital expenditure guidance.

11. Recent Developments

• 28 Jan 2026 — Amazon announces approximately 16,000 corporate job cuts. Framed as an anti-bureaucracy programme tied to AI-driven efficiency, bringing total corporate reductions since October 2025 to roughly 30,000 roles.
• 31 Jan 2026 — FCC approves 4,500 additional Amazon Leo satellites. The authorisation takes the planned constellation to 7,727 satellites.
• 5 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results published. Full-year net sales of $716,924m, operating income $79,975m and diluted EPS $7.17, with initial 2026 capital expenditure guidance of roughly $200bn.
• 31 Mar 2026 — NLRB-mediated settlement with the Teamsters. Amazon agreed not to retaliate against striking workers and to restore docked unpaid time off.
• 08 Apr 2026 — Amazon Leo enters enterprise beta. Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, JetBlue and NASA named among launch partners for the rebranded satellite programme.
• 14 Apr 2026 — Amazon agrees to acquire Globalstar for $11.6bn. The deal secures direct-to-device satellite spectrum and includes an Apple iPhone emergency-SOS partnership routed via Amazon Leo.
• 20 May 2026 — Annual Meeting of Shareholders held virtually.
• 25 Jun 2026 — European Commission issues a preliminary view on AWS. The Commission indicated AWS should be designated a gatekeeper service under the Digital Markets Act, with a final decision expected by the end of 2026.
• 30 Jul 2026 — Q2 2026 results. Net sales of $200,606m, up 19.6 per cent; AWS up 36.7 per cent to $42,232m, the fastest in eighteen quarters; AWS remaining performance obligations of $496bn; 2026 capital expenditure guidance raised to roughly $220bn.
• 03 Aug 2026 — Market capitalisation tops $3 trillion intraday. The shares reached $287.20 on the day; Jeff Bezos sold 1,209,649 shares for approximately $346.5m under a pre-arranged plan.
• 06 Aug 2026 — Alexa+ launches in Australia in early access. The first Asia-Pacific market for the AI assistant.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• Expected Oct 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Amazon has not yet confirmed the date on its investor relations site; the company has reported the third quarter in the final week of October in each of the last several years. Guidance for the quarter is net sales of $197.0bn to $202.0bn and operating income of $22.5bn to $26.5bn.
• Expected Dec 2026 — European Commission final decision on whether AWS is designated under the Digital Markets Act, following the preliminary view issued in June 2026.
• Expected Dec 2026 — AWS re:Invent, the annual customer conference at which Amazon has historically unveiled its silicon and model roadmap.
• Expected Feb 2027 — Q4 and FY2026 results, including the first full-year capital expenditure outturn against the roughly $220bn plan and initial 2027 guidance.
• TBC 2027 — Federal Trade Commission monopolisation trial before Judge Chun, currently scheduled for early 2027.
• TBD — FCC ruling on Amazon's requested two-year extension to the Amazon Leo satellite deployment milestone that fell due on 30 July 2026.

Quarterly reporting dates are confirmed by Amazon roughly three weeks in advance on its investor relations site. Track the release calendar alongside the macro schedule on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and discuss the numbers with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

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