Amazon Employees, Not Investors, Will Have to Pressure Jeff Bezos to Slow Down

Employees at one of Amazon.com's fulfillment centers on Dec. 2, 2013Photograph by Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
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Thursday’s quarterly earnings report from Amazon spooked Wall Street. The 95¢ per share loss for the third quarter was worse than even the 74¢ loss analysts had expected. Revenue came in at $20.58 billion, a 20 percent jump from the same quarter a year ago and well ahead of the overall e-commerce growth rate of 15.7 percent. Yet analysts had expected slightly better sales, and Amazon’s projections for the all-important coming holiday quarter also missed estimates.

So the stock tanked, down 11 percent in after-hours trading—after already having fallen 20 percent for the year. It’s a terrible time to be an Amazon bull.