One mission
Of course, this is only one way to look at Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s business. It’s not just an online retailer after all. You may have heard of this little thing called Amazon Web Services? AWS has reached $2 billion in sales and supports hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries already. When we consider the actual potential market opportunity, it gets downright exciting. In fact, Barron’s research recently targeted that market opportunity at more than $150 billion. Even just a small piece of that makes a big difference. And the fact of the matter is that AWS does a lot of things that many other providers either can’t or aren’t willing to do.
There is the justifiable observation that Bezos has too many irons in the fire, which are diverting his attention from what really matters. I choose to look at this a little bit differently (shocker). Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s corporate mission is stated thusly: “We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators.” To me, Amazon and Bezos really only have one iron in the fire, and that’s it right there. To be the most customer-centric company on the face of the Earth. Period. Full stop. And in order to do this, their strategy is to offer up all of these different products and services that, in the end, help make our lives easier and more enjoyable than ever before.
It’s your call
Whether you believe in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) as an investment is totally up to you. And I’m also fully aware that because management holds a lot of its numbers close to the vest, these Prime assumptions may very well be robust. But in my opinion, you should not be looking at this company through a traditional analyst’s lens of price-to-earnings or net losses. Amazon demands that you take a big-picture approach and look at what the company is doing to shape our world. Look at it from the perspective of its competitive advantage(s) and its tenacious founder/leader. I cannot recommend highly enough taking a look at Jeff Bezos’ 2012 annual letter to shareholders. You can find the history of them all right here. It’s a short and sweet read that will provide you the best insight as to how he thinks and what he’s trying to do. From there, it all just boils down to whether you choose to buy it or not. I choose to.
The article Amazon and Bezos Really Only Have One Iron in the Fire originally appeared on Fool.com.
Jason Moser owns shares of Amazon.com. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Amazon.com and Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ:COST).
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