Amazon.

com, Inc
Amazon.com, Inc is a global multinational company which is commonly known as Amazon. It
is an American company that was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as a normal online platform for
buying books. This is a household name in the Information Technology arena and the company now
offers a variety of businesses like e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and Artificial
Intelligence.

The Covid-19 pandemic has provided an amazing opportunity to Amazon, quite

unexpectedly. Amazon benefitted from the lockdown orders which boosted its online retail business
and cloud, computing division. Momentarily, the company had to completely focus only on sales of
essential items due to the high demand. Amazon also had its challenges that many employees were
affected by covid including casualties and then there were unionization issues which lead to an
increase in operating expenses.

Amazon quickly rose to the challenge, since it is better placed as an online retailer platform
without any physical stores and well established global distribution network. It was time for Amazon
to invest in 175000 new warehouses and also hired more than 35k people to support and manage
the surging demand. The introduction of Amazon’s Fulfillment operations and moving it completely
in-house was the game changer that provided the ability to ship the products to customers
effectively and consistently.

Year 2021 2020 2019

Revenue 469,822 386,064 280,522
Net Income 33,364 21,331 11,588
Profit margin 7.10% 5.53% 4.13%
ROE 28.00% 27.10% 21.10%
Total Asset 420,549 321,195 225,248
Total Liabilities 282,304 227,791 163,188
Total Equity 138,245 93,404 62,060

Conclusion

Amazon is a company that started small but had grown into one of the leading brands in the
world over the years. The growing interest of people in e-commerce has played a key role. The
Financial Management team of the company has been continuously reviewing the 2 key
performance Indicator, their capital needs and the operating cash flows year-on-year. They
showcased the ability to identify fast-rising markets as early as possible before anyone else and
place their footprint using their strong e-commerce capability in many countries. Amazon stock is in
a strong position which gives great confidence for investors to continue to be in the position to
“buy”. Amazon will not experience any financial distress at least for the next 2 years due to its strong
financial position.

References:
1. Amazon-2020-Annual-Report.pdf (q4cdn.com)
2. Amazon 2021-Annual-Report.pdf (q4cdn.com)
3. How Amazon managed the coronavirus crisis and came out stronger (cnbc.com)
4. How the Covid-19 pandemic has increased Amazon's dominance – podcast | News | The
Guardian