1/ $AMZN 1Q’21 Update

By now, it is no surprise that Amazon would post another Amazing quarter, but the growth/margin in international (+60%) and ads/other (+77%) still raised my eyebrows.

Let’s look at segment by segment and some highlights from the call.
2/ But first here’s the breakdown of revenue by segment (both product and geography)

The real surprise was how international operating margin increased from -2.6% in 1Q’20 to +4.1% in 1Q’21. That’s +670 bps margin improvement vs NA’s +260 bps during the same time.
3/ One of my concerns was whether Amazon can mimic its success in NA to international markets as well.

Looking at the operating leverage and the pace of improvement, this looks much better than I anticipated.
4/ E-commerce (1P+3P)

+64% YoY 3P growth. This beast has no sign of slowdown.

“In the U.S., Same-Day Delivery in as fast as five hours is free on orders over $35 on over three million items in select cities”
5/ “Grocery has been a great revelation during the post-pandemic period here. I think people really value the ability to get home delivery. And we've seen the numbers go up considerably pre and post-pandemic”

Amazon Business: $25 Bn run-rate, ~50% sales from 3P.
6/ Prime

“175 million Prime members have streamed shows and movies in the past year, and streaming hours are up more than 70% year over year”

Total Prime members now ~200 mn

So every 7 out of 8 Prime members watched video. Video is a great customer acquisition tool for Prime
7/ AWS

no deceleration in topline with increasing margins.

One and half years ago, I remember people were really concerned about AWS margin sustainability with competition from Azure and GCP heating up.

AWS backlog $52.9 Bn, +55% YoY
8/ Every time I look at AWS/Azure/GCP numbers, it reminds me of this:

“for all practical purposes, I believe AWS is market-size unconstrained”.

If you haven’t read Bezos pitch on AWS, these four paragraphs will be a treat for you. Again, this was in Bezos letter in *2014*.
9/ Other

“Hours watched on Twitch nearly doubled year-over-year in the first quarter, and we now average more than 35 million daily visitors.”

~80% other revenue is ads. What’s driving the eye-popping growth? Traffic and relevance of the ads.
10/ Outlook: 2Q’21 topline growth +24%-30% which I thought is incredible given the tough comp of last year.

A big caveat though Prime day this time is in Q2 vs Q4 last year; will be interesting to see Etsy’s guidance next week.
11/ Amazon continues to execute quarter-in-quarter-out. Probably boring by now, but boring is beautiful 😊

Here’s a thread on my favorite Bezos letter (2014):

And the latest one also is pretty close:
End/ Phew, Big Tech earnings is done!

You can find all my twitter threads here: mbi-deepdives.com/twitter-thread…

I will cover $ETSY, $ANSS, and $ANGI next week.

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More from @borrowed_ideas

29 Apr
1/ $FB 1Q'21 Update

I have been told “nobody uses Facebook”.
Last quarter, 1.88 Bn “nobody” used Facebook daily.

Lots of interesting data points and snippets on this call. Here are my notes.
2/ Numbers in this quarter was a thing of beauty (perhaps applies to all big tech). They are making quite a mockery of “law of large numbers”.

FB’s 2016 *annual* topline was $27 Bn. Wow!

Acceleration in VR (other)+ overall revenue growth+ operating leverage make you drool.
3/ DAU +8% YoY; MAU +10%; Family DAP +15%
# of impressions +12%, avg price/ad +30%

Zuck highlighted three topics on the call:
I. AR/VR
II. Social Commerce
III. Creator Economy
Read 16 tweets
28 Apr
1/ Thread: $SHOP 1Q’21 Update

Shopify is a special company trying to solve the ABC of commerce on the internet for everyone. And it is run by deeply competent leader(s).

I’m not a shareholder, so it must be true.

Here are my highlights from the latest quarter.
2/ “A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.”-Bill Gates

Merchants generated $307B, and its partners made $12B. SHOP’s revenue in 2020 was $2.9B. Like I said, it’s a special company.
3/ Both GMV and revenue more than doubled as broader e-commerce penetration remains elevated.

Subscription Solution +71% YoY
Merchant solution +137% YoY
Gross Payments Volume (GPV) 46% of GMV (vs 42% in 1Q’21)
Read 12 tweets
28 Apr
1/ Thread: $GOOG 1Q’21 Update

Hey Google, what’s the best business capitalism has ever come up with?

Google: It’s our search business.

Here are my highlights from the earnings call and quarter.
2/ I was starting to think the days of 25% topline growth were the stories from the yesteryears.

Well, Q1 revenues grew by 34%!

GOOG's *annual* topline in 2013 was $55 Bn. They just did the same in a quarter.

Search, YouTube, Cloud: GOOG is really firing on all cylinders here
3/ Operating income more than doubled and margin expanded by a whopping ~1,000 bps.

This was driven by ~800 bps margin expansion in Services, and massive improvement in GCP’s operating losses.
Read 11 tweets
20 Apr
1/8 Thread: Phil Fisher's investing philosophy

If Ben Graham popularized "value investing", Phil Fisher was the OG of "growth investing". Buffett even characterized his philosophy as "85% Graham and 15% Fisher".

Just read a good piece on Fisher. Some quick notes.
2/8 Here's how Fisher defined "growth company". The last point really stands out:

"the advantage cannot be meaningfully gauged with numbers and mathematical formulas."
3/8 "no investment philosophy, unless it is just a carbon copy of someone else’s approach, develops in its complete form in any day or year. In my own case, it grew over a considerable period of time"
Read 8 tweets
15 Apr
1/ Thread: $AMZN 2020 Shareholder Letter

This is Bezos' last letter as CEO of Amazon. I have been saying this for a while: Buffett and Bezos are two best business writers of our time.

It truly is a fitting letter to end Bezos' tenure. Here are my highlights.
2/ "...more than 7/8ths of the shares, representing $1.4 trillion of wealth creation, are owned by others. Who are they? ...they’re Mary and Larry, who sent me this note out of the blue just as I was sitting down to write this shareholder letter"
3/ One of the best arguments in favor of capitalism is this opportunity for Mary and Larry to participate in the wealth creation machine by an inventive, ambitious, and motivated strangers.

It's not just family office and hedge funds. Let's not forget the "Mary and Larry".
Read 17 tweets
14 Apr
1/ Thread: Market-Expected Return on Investment (MEROI)

@mjmauboussin and Dan Callahan published their new piece today on MEROI. Regular followers know I'm a big fan of Mauboussin and a big believer of expectations investing approach.

Let's dig into the new piece.
2/ A company's valuation is just sum of two things:

Steady-State Value (SSV) + Present Value of Growth Opportunities (PVGO)

SSV = NOPAT capitalized by Cost of Capital

PVGO depends on three things...
3/
a. the spread between ROIC and Cost of Capital
b. how much a company can invest
c. how long a company can find value-creating opportunities

Calculating SSV is more straight forward, but PVGO is quite tricky and is riddled with many assumptions/forecasts.
Read 14 tweets

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