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Introduction Mike Taylor: Hi, Behind the Idea Listeners Introduction Mike Taylor: Hi, Behind The Idea listeners. You’re tuned into the first episode of our four-part ​ miniseries on Amazon.com, ticker symbol AMZN. Across these four episodes, we’re going to bring in some really heavy hitters as guests and we’re super excited. We’re going to take a super geeky dive into Amazon’s financial statements; we’re going to explore Amazon’s business strategy and competitive advantage. Daniel, what else are we going to do? DS: We’re also going to look at the business itself. We’re going to look at Jeff Bezos and whether the ​ company has key man risk around his legendary polymath leadership of the company. We’re going to talk regulatory risks too and whether the company is too big to fail either as far as the government is concerned or as far as they themselves are going to be concerned. And of course we’re going to talk about the valuation and make absolutely zero conclusions about whether the company is a buyer itself. MT: The Behind the Idea way. Yeah. So, it’s our pleasure to kick off the Amazon miniseries with a ​ conversation with Brad Stone. He is the author of The Everything Store, which is the complete authoritative biography of Amazon, the company. And he is also an editor at Bloomberg Technology. So, thanks Brad for joining us. We did this series in honor of Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Amazon’s tremendous impact on those two components of the holiday season. So, from me and Daniel, happy early Thanksgiving, it’s our pleasure to deliver this Amazon series as a gift to you. DS: Enjoy. ​ MT: Gobble, gobble. ​ Interview with Brad Stone DS: Welcome to Behind the Idea, the podcast that looks at what makes great investment analysis ​ work. I’m Daniel Shvartsman. MT: And I’m Mike Taylor. ​ DS: We’re starting our four-part series on Amazon, where we’re looking at the retail giant through a ​ number of different angles, try to understand its role in our economy, where it might be headed as a stock, and just kind of pick apart this huge company that seems to be everywhere in our lives. So, two things that we kind of wanted to break down from the business end were any key man risk related to Jeff Bezos, the Founder and CEO of the company. And also can Amazon get too big? Those are kind of two big questions that occur to us when we review the company. And so, to do that, we’re starting off, we are speaking with Brad Stone, who is the author of The Everything Store, which is basically the book on Amazon. He’s also recently wrote an article for Business in Bloomberg on the company and its India expansion overseas there, Amazon coverage in general. So, Brad, welcome on Behind the Idea. Brad Stone: Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. ​ DS: So, let’s just start basically. The Everything Store came out in 2013, how has the company sort of ​ ​ ​ evolved in the time since? BS: Yeah. Wow, it does -- it’s almost exactly five years actually, and then I updated the book in 2014, ​ so I added a little chapter. And then this year I put a little epilogue or a little prologue on it for the fifth edition. But you’re right; I mean it’s an almost completely different company. I mean you think about back in 2013 in the fall when the book came out the market cap was less than $200 billion, it’s $750 billion today after briefly touching $1 trillion after this latest market correction. It was a brilliant online store only then. Now it’s got hundreds of the Whole Foods physical stores in addition to Amazon Go and bookstores. In terms of devices, it was -- it had done the Kindle and was experimenting with the Kindle Fire Tablets now. It’s propagated Alexa devices. So, it’s created a speech platform and it has 600,000 employees. When I wrote the book there was a 150,000. So, it’s like -- I kind of think of it now as The Everything Company. I wrote a book about The Everything Store. It’s a multiple of where it was back then. DS: Is it -- is that in your view an evolution? Is it just a sort of natural progression from where they ​ were or did something changed where they really had to start extending into all these different areas, like you said store to company? BS: Yeah. I mean I think in some ways, yes, it was a natural evolution. In their pursuit of being The ​ Everything Store, they came upon some product categories that where their experimentation let them to the conclusion that physical assets were necessary, I think groceries is the big example of that. 10 years of experimentation of Amazon Fresh, leading them to believe that the supply chain mechanics of storing perishables is tricky and people want to shop in person and so they did on a grocery store. But then in other respects I think this is not a natural evolution that it’s a result of the invention of the company and in particular Bezos’ restless mind. Alexa wasn’t an outgrowth really, anything they were doing. Maybe to some extent they were tinkering around the speech when they thought they were going to have a headphone. But it was Jeff coming to the conclusion that this voice stuff could be its own computing platform. And in that respect what they’ve done so successfully is create entirely separate businesses with their own very promising growth trajectories. MT: That brings up something for me, the experimentation concept it connotes this kind of ​ randomness. And so, I wanted to hear from you whether you think that there is a -- how we should think about Amazon’s directions? If it’s experimental that sort of suggests that there is some chaotic element there, but there also seem to be patterns. Are we reading patterns into what’s basically just a series of independent processes or how do you consider what’s been successful at Amazon in that context? BS: No. I mean I think from my vantage point it’s pretty organized that they’ve got these processes in ​ terms of how they kind of conduct their year that repeat. But amidst the chaos is this idea that ideas come from all places and that they should plank a lot of new things and try them out. And they are also a company that just doesn’t seem to mind redirecting capital from the bottom-line into new projects. And so, they’ve done that over a course of almost their history. I mean certainly in the last 10 years starting with AWS and the Kindle and now leading to all sorts of things like drones and probably lot of stuff we don’t about. So, no, I don’t think it’s chaos. And for a lot of companies we might say God, look they’re trying so many things. They are getting away from the core. But I don’t know it seems to me that Amazon has sort of redefined its core from online selling to where -- expanded it very broadly and defined it broadly and now they can pretty much do everything and their investors mostly seem comfortable with it. DS: One of the things that we now see happening that I think is at least in terms of the market ​ perception and the world perception around Amazon versus five years ago. Five years ago, I think there were still some questions over Amazon on whether or not it would -- nobody doubted it will be successful, but would it grow into its valuation, would it continue to really gain share et cetera, I think there was more questions. And now you just need a rumor to come out that Amazon is going into baking or Amazon is going into healthcare or Amazon is going into pharmacies or you could start making stuff up, cannabis whatever, and Amazon doesn’t really move because it’s such a huge company. But every competitor in that space seems to lose 5% or 10% just from the near hit that Amazon might compete with them. Do you -- any thoughts on that? Is that an overreaction? Is the market sort of giving too much credit to Amazon at this point? BS: Yeah. It is sort of funny when Amazon made a deal buying PillPack or Whole Foods. And then in ​ the day, their stock is rewarded by an increase or the rival stock is punished by a decrease at values that exceed the actual purchase price. So, it’s a good question. I mean I think in some cases, yes, it’s overdone that these are big markets with room for lot of players. Groceries, it’s $500 billion or $600 billion and little tiny Whole Foods doesn’t going to make a difference right away at lease, probably not even in the long term. But where I think it’s not overdone is the idea that Amazon’s entrance in their category means that all these businesses are going to have to change the way they do business. They are going to have to invest and probably start to think about how to improve the customer experience. I mean as an example, grocery stores that haven’t evolved all that much since like I was a kid.
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