Recently, an article came out questioning if Amazon is “a giant ponzi scheme dressed in drag,” and it reminded us of a blog post we wrote in January, “What E-commerce Pricing Strategists Can Learn from Aircraft Piloting.” In our post, we discussed Amazon’s current precarious strategy of flying fast and low on increasing revenue and decreasing margins; this “ponzi scheme” article digs deeper into Amazon’s finances to reach a very similar conclusion to ours: “If AMZN’s revenues slow down or its expenses unexpectedly increase, for whatever reason, AMZN could face liquidity problems.”
With Amazon’s “airspeed” (revenue) increasing and “altitude” (operating margin) decreasing, those stakeholders with “brains” may want to know where the parachutes are “stored.”
(Original chart by Dave Kranzler; Edits by LPP)
Perhaps Amazon’s current position is comparable to how Buzz Lightyear describes his ability to “fly”:
“This isn’t flying, this is falling… with style.”