jbulltard@jbulltard1
People think I joke when I rant how poorly run Amazon is. No company has more potential, but management is inept, look at these returns since Jan 2020
$NVDA 2182%
$TSLA 506%
$APPL 201%
$MSFT 173%
$GOOG 168%
$META 164%
$AMZN 113%
$NFLX 96%
Thankfully I can write a long tweet(my first ever)
Start with Bezos. Jeff has been checked out for years, one of the great visionaries of our time has been aloof as he spends his days lifting weights and staring at lip injections. This was a guy who authorized the biggest overspend of warehouses in history during covid and dropped the bag on Andy Jassy as he exited. He remains chairman and everything runs through him.
He wants to be a Hollywood elite so bad so he authorizes more spend than Netflix on content and yet Amazon studios can only muster to pump out a fraction of the hits. Kuiper, why is this not under Blue Origin with Jeff's rockets? Because Amazon is Jeff's ATM machine and he dumps the stuff he doesn't want to fund on Amazon. What about the recent worrying email Jeff sent out that he had concerns Amazon was behind on generative AI? Well Jeff is the chairman, the record AI Capex is happening on his watch and yet he doesn't see the need to actually be in the office? Again Jeff was a normal guy once, on the floor with the team, now he's on his yacht sending emails about his concerns. What happened to leading by example?
Even Elon Musk, who I think is full of it and makes up things to pump a stock, he even seems to care more about shareholders and the pump than Jeff. Look at this year, every time the stock finally has a little bit of momentum we get Bezos selling. First it was $8B in February and now he apparently won't sell a share below $200 from this form 4's so he caused the stock to stall out for 2 weeks. God forbid Jeff Bezos sells shares at 199.02 or 198.78. Mark Zuckerberg has countless insider sales at any price, but Jeff needs $200+ and has now killed all momentum again. The guy is a colossal drag meanwhile Elon is making up stuff literally daily on Twitter to sustain a Tesla pump. Amazon has a license to operate robotaxis in California right now with actual Zoox cars in function today. Tesla doesn't even have that but somehow this 8/8 event is going to be material.
Anyhow enough about Jeff, let's talk about the rest of management. Andy Jassy was the head of AWS, he was the one who should have seen this gen AI boom coming, he didn't, so Adam Selipsky took the fall. Whatever, Selipsky was dry as toast, much like CFO Olsavsky. Olsavsky is maybe the worst public speaker I've ever seen. Listen to him on a call, he mumbles, he fumbles every possible attempt to pump. The day META announced a dividend an analyst asked Olsavsky about one 2 quarters ago and here was this chance to say " It's absolutely on the table, we've discussed it internally, but not right now" instead he says it isn't happening. There is an art to the pump, the great companies do it, even Tesla does it and they have nothing, you have to keep shareholders excited. Amazon didn't even send out Jassy on earnings calls till maybe 6 quarters in they waited till stock performance was so bad that they finally rolled him out.
Something is wrong internally at Amazon, I don't care what anyone says. The multiple is compressing, nobody believes in this management team. They just replaced the head of AWS after its biggest quarter ever in terms of operating income without even an explanation. Just simply Garman was their guy for years. Whatever, classic Amazonian nonsense.
This company was what Nvidia is today in 2014, the stock was nonstop for years, it was the growth story of the decade. Hell, it still is, look at how this advertising business came out of nowhere and in a few years went from $0 to $60B in no time. Amazon has so many levers to pull, it should easily, easily be the world's largest company in 10 years. Like not even in question.
As for me, I bought my first shares in 2013 for a split adjusted basis of $9. I will never sell those shares, my overall Amazon shares have a basis of $37 with years of me adding to it. I also have a boatload of calls in 2026 for anyone paying attention. I'm roaring kitty but with an actual real stock and one that should absolutely NOT be worth $1.5T less than Apple today. I love Amazon, I know seller's hate them, as a consumer I really don't care, they save me a ton of time and I'm willing to overpay for stuff and not go to Costco to do that. Time is the most valuable thing in the world and those who save you time are the most important people in the world.
Amazon should not be last to do a stock split, last to issue a buyback, last to issue a dividend, last to join the generative AI party. They're literally last to join on everything they do.
I'm not giving up on Amazon ever but it's exhausting how this company constantly has a new issue it's dealing with. Life is so simple, you make money, you buyback stock and up goes the equity. Really look at $AZO, Auto Zone is maybe the most mediocre company you could ever think of and look at how it's equity performs, up and to the right forever. With Amazon, you have untold amounts of Capex spend and somehow they manage to make it to where sellers make nothing and Amazon themselves make nothing because they're so bad at controlling the spend. I've truly never seen anything like it and it's always "soon". Of course even now, Amazon just broke out of a 4 year base, it just had the 50 week cross the 200 week a couple months ago, most names have violent moves right after, not Amazon, it's up 4% and stalling because of Bezos in the way once again.
Of course Amazon is going higher, most real companies do, stocks go up 90% of the time, the issue is, Amazon is no longer a leader and hasn't been for a long time, it's a laggard and there's really no reason for it other than management can never seem to "get it". Google lagged hard early this year, management realized what it needed to change and got the message out and Google is up 50% in 4 months. Apple just did the same thing after lagging hard and it's up nearly 50% in 3 months as well. Amazon of course has nothing interesting to say ever and it's a constant waiting game, but why would anyone want to be involved in such an opaque company? Last Q they said Capex would be higher every quarter going forward but couldn't give a number. Investors hate questions and Amazon creates them at every turn.
No company has more potential, not even close, but this is just an incredibly poorly run company with one issue after another. It's like that beautiful woman you know you should not be involved with, but she's so attractive you put up with her nonsense because you're a masochist. We've all been there, and in terms of equities, that is what Amazon is. This company with tantalizing potential who can never seem to put it together or say the right things at the right time anymore.
End rant.
