Amazon has acquired more than 100 companies! Beyond the platform, Amazon wants to do more

Recently, according to foreign media reports, in more than 20 years since its establishment, Amazon has acquired or invested in more than 100 companies. Among them, data provided by Augusta Free Press.com shows that the total value of Amazon's 10 largest acquisitions exceeds US$33 billion.

The largest acquisition to date was the $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market to expand its online grocery business five years ago. It is reported that WFM, which has more than 460 stores in the United States, has become a cargo transit station for Amazon to achieve faster home delivery services, becoming an important weapon in its competition with Walmart.

Last May, Amazon completed the second largest acquisition in history, which was the acquisition of the film production company MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) for $8.45 billion. Amazon's intention in this acquisition is to make a breakthrough in the film industry as soon as possible, and to attract more subscribers around the world by creating blockbusters and successful franchises.

Amazon's third largest acquisition in history took place in July this year, when it acquired the US healthcare company One Medical for US$3.9 billion. In this transaction, Amazon tried to expand its business scope to primary care, in addition to operating Amazon Care, providing virtual care services and home care to employees and companies.

According to statistics, Amazon's top three acquisitions are worth more than $26.05 billion, 3.7 times more than all other acquisitions in the top ten. Amazon has rapidly entered different fields through acquisitions. In terms of acquisition types, Amazon's top ten acquisitions involve offline retailers, the film industry, the health care industry, autonomous driving, e-commerce platforms, smart homes, game streaming platforms, robots, etc.

Therefore, it can be found that the years of rapid development of the Internet are also the years of Amazon's soaring. The most recent peak of its rapid development was during the 24 months of the epidemic. In order to cope with the package pressure brought by the surge in consumer online shopping demand, Amazon expanded its warehouses on a large scale, doubling the size of its fulfillment network established in 25 years. The warehouse area has increased from 165 million square feet before the epidemic to 379 million square feet in May 2022.

However, in the first and second quarters of this year, although Amazon achieved growth in total revenue, its net profit in these two quarters suffered huge losses due to the simultaneous increase in operating costs.

After two consecutive quarters of losses this year, Amazon has stepped on the brakes to reduce costs by laying off employees, closing redundant warehouses, and canceling or suspending some expansion plans, and it expects its third-quarter operating income to be between $125 billion and $130 billion, an increase of 13% to 17%. However, Amazon's market value has evaporated by more than $400 billion in the past 12 months, with its market value plummeting from $1.77 trillion to $1.3 trillion, a drop of 26%.

However, I believe that with Amazon's strong strength, it is no problem to turn losses into profits. After implementing a series of cost-cutting measures, we will wait and see how Amazon's revenue performance will be in the third quarter of this year.

Amazon

Acquisition