Amazon (AMZN): Amazon Web Services produces the highest margins across all of Amazon’s business. The segment remained solid in the third quarter despite a lackluster bottom line number. Business from AWS grew by about 55% to $3.23 billion and also generated record profits, with quarterly operating income income of $861 million. Amazon currently supports some of the biggest platforms like Netflix and Verizon and continues to add more features to further entrench itself as the de facto cloud computing service. That said, Microsoft’s recent rise in the space with Azure places some pressure on Amazon to expand and innovate so as to not lose any market share
Retail sales, on the other hand, generate the lowest margins but a majority of Amazon’s total revenue. In the third quarter revenue from North America accounted for 58% of total sales, representing a 6.8% increase sequentially and about 26% on a year over year basis. The international segment, which accounts for 32% of AWS revenue, grew slightly faster at 7.8% on a quarterly basis. Retail sales also include Prime memberships, content on Instant Video, and Kindle related services, all of which continue to perform well. The biggest concern for Amazon will be whether it can replicate its domestic success overseas. Increasing competition, currency headwinds, and potential Trump fallout remain other near term threats to the retail segment.
Amazon, like Google, also funds moonshot shot investments which investors view as a big pile of burning money, until they aren’t. Some new projects in the pipeline for Amazon include drone delivery, Amazon Go stores, more expansive original content, grocery delivery and much more. Knowing Amazon, many of these early stage projects will become the cornerstone of future growth but in the interim they continue to drag down margins.
Chipotle (CMG): In a report earlier this month, Chipotle state that same store sales progressively improved throughout the fourth quarter. In October comps fell by 20%, dropped again in November but then jumped by 15% in December. December faced the easiest comparisons as it was the first full month following the initial health outbreak.
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