What I don’t get was how Amazon was able to operate for 20 years without making a profit in a supposed free market. They undercut brick and mortar stores and put them out of business.
Because they really did make a profit, but plowed it all back into the business.
As soon as I saw that Amazon was starting to expand its operation to include its own delivery vehicles I knew the company was in trouble. If a country with such huge volumes of freight can't even make money with FedEx and UPS competing for its business, what makes it think it can do that "last-mile" delivery process any more efficiently than those giants in the shipping business?
“What I dont get was how Amazon was able to operate for 20 years without making a profit in a supposed free market.”
In a free market, venture capitalists and stock speculators are free to subsidize a non-profitable company that they believe will be profitable in the future.
The reason they don’t “make a profit” is they reinvest everything. They actually make quite a bit of profit, they just don’t believe money in the bank is worth anything, so it doesn’t sit there and book as profit, it all goes into expansion.
They really don’t make a profit now. A few quarters ago they were taking money from CapEx to show a profit. They have never paid any dividends either.