Amazon.com Inc (AMZN)

[retiredanalyst]

Well it's PE isn't 3000X really. Consider the capital spending buildout for 2012 quarter over quarter for new distribution and data centers,

Q1-$1.899 billion
Q2-$2.123 billion
Q3-$2.310 billion
Q4-$3.785 billion

Total capital spending spending beyond operational expenditures was $10.1 billion dollars. If Amazon decided to not make these investments, that $10.1 billion dollars would move to the other side of the ledger. With it's current market cap of about $120 billion, it's really not as expensive as it looks, and as I said, if Bezos wanted to slow capital improvements and show more profit, he easily could. Amazon certainly doesn't need to invest $10 billion in one year, but just because they invest profits back into the company, doesn't necessarily mean that is a bad thing.