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Amazon stock dropped more than 7% on Friday after the company missed expectations on both revenue and earnings for Q4 and showed higher-than-expected growth in fulfillment costs.
But quarterly fluctuations aside, the story of Amazon is interesting because it's never been very profitable. As this chart from Statista shows, the company's revenue has gone from nothing to over $100 billion a year, but its net income has stayed very close to zero. That's because Jeff Bezos and Amazon are relentlessly focused on long-term growth, and every extra dollar they make they put back into the company.
Amazon skeptics hate this, and often complain about how the company is overvalued. But Amazon bulls look at things like Amazon Web Services - a fast growing, profitable, $10-billion-a-year business that's completely outside Amazon's traditional e-commerce core - and think maybe Bezos has the right idea.
Statista
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.