Material Detail

On May 15, 2017, Amazon.com celebrated the 20th anniversary of its initial public offering (IPO). The company’s first twenty years was a period of remarkable growth but with very little to show in terms of accounting earnings. This reflected Amazon’s strategy of investing in expansion and research and development with the idea that sacrificing profitability in the short-term would allow the company to create value over the long-term. Relatedly, and perhaps not surprisingly, Amazon’s voluntary non-GAAP disclosures emphasized cash flow performance measures, not accounting earnings. Students are asked to contemplate potential pathways to dramatically higher profitability for Amazon.

Learning Objective:

To understand the layout and terminology of the cash flow statement as well as how the cash flow statement and income statement relate to one another.

A watermarked copy of the case can be viewed here. If you are an instructor, you can complete the form to obtain an educator's copy. Note: You can obtain multiple educator copies with one form.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again