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Financial Analysis of Amazon.Com

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Submitted By angelofresco
Words 3763
Pages 16
Writing Assignment: Financial Analysis
Amazon.com
by
Angelo Fresco

Strayer University
FIN 534: Financial Management
Dr. James Glenn
March 11, 2013

Company Overview
The company, its operations, locations, markets, and lines of business
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most visited Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products at steep discounts by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These lines of business include: an online bookstore, DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet computer—and is a major provider of cloud computing services. The majority of Amazon’s sales are products sold by Amazon, although many are from third-party retail sellers and consumers that sell their products from the comfort of their own home using Amazon.com as a platform. Amazon was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It has direct international operations in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Last year Fortune ranked CEO Jeff Bezos as its Businessperson of the Year on the back of the company's stellar growth, especially in its Amazon Web Services and Kindle divisions (CNN Money, 2013). The company continues to take on a variety of competitors, going after Netflix's streaming services, Google and Apple's tablets, and brick-and-mortar stores across the country. There is even talk of an Amazon smartphone.
Since 2004, Amazon has begun to rapidly expand its web services arsenal. Products such as Amazon EC2

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