Analysis Of Amazon 's Income Statement And Balance Sheet

➢ Mission: Amazon’s mission is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible price[1].

As of January 2010, Amazon.com has three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples. By offering a large amount of varied categories through its website and other international ones (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.fr, and so on), it has managed to grow to a customer based company with over 30 million people. In addition, the online retail format enables the company to reduce costs of managing inventory (Amazon.com; online bookstore, 2008).

Horizontal analysis allows side by side comparisons on a year to year basis to determine the performance from one year to the next. The company decides on standards to compare the results of the analysis. Standards are researched by checking competitors, internet research of general industry guidelines or standards created from past experience in the company.

Although it is the most established because of its long history and early start, competitors such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, AutoZone Inc., eBay Inc., Rakutenchi Inc., Netflix Inc., Jet.Com, Wal-Mart and Time Warner Cable among others exist (Yahoo Finance, 2015). Notably, apart from Jet.com, Amazon’s competitors are segmented according to products and services offered; for instance, Wal-Mart stores Inc. offers competition in general merchandise and electronics segment while eBay, Time Warner Cable and Apple offers competition in the media segment. Among the competitors, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have the highest market capitalization; however, the Amazon’s dwarfs all other competitors. Amazon has a high market capitalization at $254.82 billion (Nassauer, 2015). The table below shows Amazon’s major competitors based on their market capitalization and 52-week share price range

A vertical and horizontal analysis of each company's balance sheet and income statement in this particular case will be enlightening. A vertical analysis will for instance shed some light on how revenue is being used. In this case, each component of the companies' financial statements will be converted into a percentage of a key component of either the balance sheet or the income statement. A special common size balance sheet and income statement will be utilized to ease comparison. The

Amazon.com is a customer centric company. They put more effort in improving their system to make the experience of customer more comfortable so that he keeps on returning to the website. Jeffery Bezos who is the founder of the Amazon.com started this company after seeing the use of internet increasing rapidly.

Diversification strategies involve broadening the scope of an organization across different products and market sectors. It requires an organization to explore new experiences and knowledge outside its existing markets and products (Business Case Studies). Strategic management is a business concept that consists of strategy analysis, creation, implementation and monitoring, used by organizations in order to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage (as cited by Jurevicius, 2013). The following parts discuss Amazon’s strategy with a focus on the company’s competitive advantage and its customers.

Overstocks income statement included 3 year of date: 2003-2005. The total revenue increased 15% each year. The gross profit included all operating expenses and research development and was the totaled out after deducting cost of good sold by the revenue. Overstock included their operating Income and loss, which included all cost of income from the current operations, expenses and interest. The income statement also included the Net Income, which was what the company earned after the operating loss was calculated. Overstocks general ledger would include all assets, liabilities, sales and expenses and list all increases and decreases. Overstocks T account would include the company's depreciation, insurance, revenue, rent and investments. (Overstock.com, 2006)

The purpose of this essay is to perform financial statement analysis on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN ). We start with an introduction of Amazon and its industry. We then evaluate the company’s financial position, liquidity, operating capability and financial flexibility using different ratios. To evaluate the financial performance of Amazon.com, Inc we disclose recurring NICO and do full ROE disaggregation.

Headquartered in Settle, Washington DC, Amazon.com is a cloud computing electronic and commerce company (Amazon, 2016). The company is one of the largest internet based retailers both in the US and globally based on total sales and market capitalization. The company does a majority of its business through online retail websites throughout the United States and with more that ten countries throughout World. In 2015, Amazon overtook Wal-Mart to become the most valuable retailer by market capitalization.

Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos opened the virtual doors of Amazon.com's online store in July 1995. The company was incorporated in 1994 in the state of Washington and reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware. The Company's principal corporate offices are located in Seattle, Washington. Amazon.com completed its initial public offering in May 1997, and its common stock is listed on the NASDAQ National Market under the ticker symbol AMZN. Amazon.com's fiscal year is based on the calendar year, and the last day of the fiscal year is December 31. The closing stock selling price for February 1, 2006 was $43.98. Amazon has never declared or paid cash dividends on its common

Amazon’s competitors include Apple Inc., Barnes & Noble, Inc. and Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC (Hoovers, 2014). For the purpose of this financial analysis we will be comparing Amazon to the SIC Code: 5961, CATALOG AND MAIL-ORDER HOUSES, industry average. The financial analysis will take into consideration the balance sheet, income statement and ratios for the past 5 years, 2009 to 2013.

Accounting helps to measure an organizations activities, process data into reports, and translate the results to decision makers. Financial statements and reports help to present the company to the public in financial terms. The information on these data statements can used to evaluate the company through vertical and horizontal analysis. Vertical analysis is the proportional analysis of a financial statement. Normally, vertical analysis is done with a financial statement over a period of time. When using vertical analysis, a line item on a financial statement is listed as a percentage of another item (Harrison, 2015). A horizontal analysis is the comparison of information or ratios over a series of reporting periods. Horizontal analysis helps investors and analysts to control how a company has grown over time. Analysts and investors could use horizontal analysis to compare a company's growth rates in relation to its competitors and industry.

Horizontal analysis is also known as trend analysis. It is a financial statement analysis method that demonstrates changes in the amounts of equivalent financial statement items over a period of time. Moreover, it is a useful tool in order to assess the trend situations in an effective and a more comprehensive manner. It involves the statements for two or more periods to evaluate trend situations. This analysis may be conducted for income statement, balance sheet, schedules of current & fixed assets, and statement of retained earnings of an organization (Wainwright, 2012).

Horizontal analysis is the comparison of a company’s historical financial information over a specific period of time. The analysis helps to determine whether an increase or decrease has taken place in particular areas of the financial performance. A horizontal analysis of Wynn’s income statement and balance sheet provides insight into their performance from 2013 and 2014. During this time period, Wynn’s assets increased 8%. Much of this growth was the result of a 37% increase in their investment securities and a 16% increase in their prepaid expenses. However, the firm did experience a 10% decrease in their cash and cash equivalents. The most drastic change occurred in the firm’s stockholder’s equity, which increased nearly 60%. This drastic increase is likely due to the increase in retained earnings over the same period, which increased from $66 million to $164 million. The horizontal analysis of the firm’s consolidated statements of income reveals mostly insubstantial. Wynn