I can understand going profitless to get things started and grab market share, especially on the internet where there are massive network effects, but Amazon has been around for 20 years.
>> Amazon has been around for 20 years
Yeah, I can remember shorting them in the dot-com bubble time. Hard to believe that was that long ago. I thought they were goners back then. Guess I’m too old-fashioned to understand “profitless prosperity”.
A stockholder would care about profits, possibly — or they might not, if the stock value increases anyway.
A business doesn’t have to make any profits to be viable. You can operate a family business that makes no money, but pays your salary. You don’t need a profit.
At some point you would expect stockholders to balk, and then the stock price will drop and the stockholders will be upset.
But “profitless prosperity” is not a mythical thing. It just isn’t the “norm” for a publicly held corporation.