Financial Performance
When Amazon started, it spent huge amounts of money not only building infrastructure,
but also buying market share. It took Amazon nine years to achieve profitability. And the
profits started to arrive only after the company changed its pricing model—focusing on re-tail prices for popular items and smaller discounts for all books. In the process, the compa-ny lost almost $3 billion. It was not until 2009 that Amazon had generated enough profits
to cover all of its prior losses (ignoring interest rates and debt).