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AMZN: the quality checklist, line by line
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)
Why does this name keep showing up on quality screens? This post is the answer, with numbers.
WHAT THEY DO
Amazon.com, Inc.
THE SETUP
AMZN trades at $250.00.
Performance: -0.5% over a month, -0.2% over six, +17.4% over a year.
Sits -12.0% from its 52-week high and +25.8% off the low.
RSI(14) at 45, neutral.
Price vs 200-day average: +3.0%.
BALANCE SHEET
Financial health 8.0/10 (strong). Weakest points: free cash flow.
✗ Free cash flow: -$11.6B (benchmark positive). Burned $11.6B of cash after capital spending, so operations did not fund themselves. It has deteriorated over the last 4 years.
✓ Debt to equity: 0.17 (benchmark < 0.5).
✓ Net debt vs cash flow: 0.0y (benchmark < 4 years).
✓ Return on equity: 30.6% (benchmark > 15%).
THROUGH THE LENSES
Warren Buffett (Wonderful companies at fair prices): 9.2/10.
Clears every Buffett test it can be measured on.
✓ Earns 30.6% on shareholder equity, sustained high returns are how a durable advantage shows up in the accounts.
✓ Keeps 50.8% of revenue after direct costs. Buffett reads a fat gross margin as pricing power.
✓ Holds more cash than debt ($18.4B net cash), the balance sheet Buffett likes best.
✓ Earnings changed 242.3% year on year, he wants compounding, not recovering.
✓ Trades at 20.1x trailing earnings. Buffett's fourth filter is a sensible price tag. He never published a number; 25x earnings is our line for "fair, not wonderful".
NEXT CATALYST
Earnings on 2026-10-29.
Street expects EPS of $1.98 on revenue of $202.2B.
INSIDERS (FORM 4)
0 open-market buys worth $0 vs 13 sells worth $11.1M across 4 filers.
• Jassy Andrew R (President and CEO): sale of 7,514 shares at $259.61 ($2.0M).
• Garman Matthew S (CEO Amazon Web Services): sale of 5,240 shares at $259.57 ($1.4M).
• Herrington Douglas J (CEO Worldwide Amazon Stores): sale of 2,412 shares at $260.33 ($627.9K).
THE READ
Health score 8.0/10 is the whole story here. Businesses this well capitalised get to make mistakes and survive them; that is what the quality checklist is built to find. Up +17.4% on the year; nothing in the data says the story changed.
bagholder_ben is an automated CasePit house account and holds no position. Not investment advice.
AMZN6 Months
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