Same revenue booked thrice?
Or possibly four times?
I seem to recall multiple court cases about accounting techniques that sound remarkably similar. I'm sure this is nothing like Autonomy though.
Amazon's Q2 was great, but the earnings release is packed with baloney
Amazon reported its earnings today, and because I am professionally depressed I read the thing in full [PDF]. "How long can I go before the red haze of rage sets in" is a fun game, and today I made it all the way to the bottom of the second page when I encountered a bullet point touting how AWS "made its spec-drive [sic] coding …
-
-
Sunday 2nd August 2026 08:01 GMT Peter-Waterman1
Re: Same revenue booked thrice?
I think that regardless of all the bollox in the earnings which is rightly called out here, it is difficult to argue with a company closing in on $150B in annual revenue growing at nearly 40%. That growth number, plus operating margin, moves every other detail to noise in my opinion.
-
-
Saturday 1st August 2026 19:13 GMT MachDiamond
"Two tiny weasel words in there."
Weasel Word Spotting should be a course of study. They let you tell whoppers without lying, sorta. "Up to" and "as much as" are good weasels. Another is when talking about a Total Addressable Market and in the next sentence mention the population of the planet. Not really relevant when talking about a first world product or service, but makes the possibility of making a mint look more achievable. There's no probability, but that's not going to be mentioned.
I think it may have been after reading "Foundation" where I started to take notice of how it's possible to say many things that mean nothing, but still sound good. Lord Dorwin made it sound like the Empire had Terminus' back, but when his talk was analyzed, it reduced to zero. The best politicians are good at this. Marketing firms thrive on it. Drink this swill and you will have a large group of good looking multi-cultural friends to hang out with on tropical beaches. Buy this car with a glass roof that will start leaking a couple of months after the warranty runs out and all your drives will be through sunny picturesque forests.
-
Friday 31st July 2026 10:15 GMT Bebu sa Ware
"free cash flow went $26 billion in the angry direction and the company sold $25 billion in bonds."
I reckon you would want to give Amazon a big miss or at least short it (and pray your pension fund isn't in it, up to its neck with this nonsense.)
Even if the technical details were vastly different contemporary market hubris still resembles the Zeitgeist of the roaring 20s immediately preceding October 1929.
-
-
Friday 31st July 2026 13:31 GMT coredump
Re: OMG!
The helluvit is, financial analyst types aren't fooled by any of these sorts of shenanigans. One only needs to see a few quarterly reports like this and it becomes familiar territory.
And yet many of them go along for the ride, pushing NASDAQ: AMZN to their clients, glowingly writing about it in their blogs and reports, etc. Because that ride is how they make their money too. Clicks, subscribers, transaction fees, and so on.
I can remember back in the dark ages (pre-dot-com boom and bust) when earnings releases would sometimes have a bit of creative accounting, e.g. trying to paper over a shortfall in one part of the business with another part's excess, still deceptive but usually not outright lying.
Nowdays the big outfits don't bother as much with the subterfuge. Sure, there's the occasional pesky shareholder lawsuit, but there's little to fear from politicians, SEC, etc. as long as suitable donations and tributes are paid.
-
Saturday 1st August 2026 19:16 GMT MachDiamond
Re: OMG!
"I can remember back in the dark ages (pre-dot-com boom and bust) when earnings releases would sometimes have a bit of creative accounting, e.g. trying to paper over a shortfall in one part of the business with another part's excess, still deceptive but usually not outright lying."
Oh, we still get that. Starlink made money, but SpaceX launch services lost a bunch. Ummm, same company and no details provided on how Starlink's "profits" were calculated.
-
-
-
Friday 31st July 2026 13:06 GMT retiredFool
Reminded me of alphabets report
where they had a massive bump in "earnings" from the spacex shares they held but had not sold. I can't recall the exact timing, but I think the spacex shares are down since the report, and so are the "earnings". They are locked up from selling like most. They have pre-ipo shares. They may get unlocked on I think around august 4th when some event happens that unleashes millions of spacex toilet paper squares that jesus turns into gold foil.
-
Friday 31st July 2026 19:07 GMT Philo T Farnsworth
Sales
The article sez "Amazon's is fully-loaded infrastructure rental. This is a hotel comparing its revenue to a mattress company's."
A hotel gets to "sell" the mattress every night while paying for it only once.
`Zon gets to "sell" its chip over and over, perhaps even several times a day.
If you think about it, the software business has been this way essentially since its inception. Develop once and sell or, even better, license as many times as the traffic will bear.
Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom would be wondering "Why didn't I think of that?"
-
-
Sunday 2nd August 2026 22:38 GMT Tron
GAFA has taken a leaf out of the political playbook.
Politics is theatre. GAFA is too now. None of this stuff is ever going to pay back the CAPEX. It's showtime for anyone mug enough to throw their cash into the pit. They'll keep going with the circular investments until the music stops, grab whatever AI IP they can for peanuts in the firesale, and move on. We have to put up with the AI BS and high prices until that happens.
