Amazon.com (AMZN)

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by third party sellers, and we also manufacture and sell the Kindle e-reader. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services, co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers, such as online advertising.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings, acquisitions, and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they align the interests of our shareholders and employees. In measuring shareholder dilution, we include all stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 461 million and 446 million at December 31, 2009 and 2008.

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We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our fixed costs include the costs necessary to run our technology infrastructure, build, enhance, and add features to our websites and our Kindle e-reader, and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to content provider and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 12, 12, and 13 for 2009, 2008, and 2007. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by other sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 68, 62, and 57 for 2009, 2008, and 2007. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by other sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.

We expect spending in technology and content will increase over time as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We seek to efficiently invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved consumer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. We are investing in Amazon Web Services, which provides technology services that give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business, and in our Kindle e-reader. A continuing challenge is to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S. economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

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In addition, the remeasurement of our intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.

For additional information about each line item summarized above, refer to Item 8 of Part II, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data—Note 1—Description of Business and Accounting Policies.”

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by third party sellers. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services, co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers, such as online advertising.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they align the interests of our shareholders and employees. In measuring shareholder dilution, we include all stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards and in-the-money and out-of-the-money stock options. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 446 million

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and 435 million at December 31, 2008 and 2007. These amounts exclude shares issuable upon conversion of our long-term debt. In 2008 and 2007, we repurchased 2.2 million shares and 6.3 million shares of our common stock under repurchase programs authorized by our Board of Directors.

We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our fixed costs include the costs necessary to run our technology infrastructure, build, enhance, and add features to our websites and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to content provider and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 12, 13, and 13 for 2008, 2007, and 2006. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by other sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 62, 57, and 53 for 2008, 2007 and 2006. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by other sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.

We expect spending in technology and content will increase over time as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We seek to efficiently invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved consumer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. We are investing in Amazon Web Services, which provides technology services that give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. A continuing challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S.

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economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

In addition, the remeasurement of our 6.875% PEACS and intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.

For additional information about each line item summarized above, refer to Item 8 of Part II, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data—Note 1—Description of Business and Accounting Policies.”

Overview

SIZE="2">Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors
and products offered by third party sellers. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services,
co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers, such as online advertising.

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by marketplace sellers. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services, Amazon Enterprise Solutions, co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they align the interests of our shareholders and employees. In managing shareholder dilution, we include all stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards and in-the-money

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and out-of-the-money stock options. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 448 million and 435 million at September 30, 2008 and December 31, 2007. These amounts exclude 2.8 million and 14 million shares issuable upon conversion of our long-term debt at September 30, 2008 and December 31, 2007.

We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our customer experience fixed costs include the costs necessary to run our technology infrastructure, build, enhance, and add features to our websites and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to publisher and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average, our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 12 for both Q3 2008 and Q3 2007. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by other sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 63 and 62 for Q3 2008 and Q3 2007. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by other sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.

We expect spending in technology and content will increase over time as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We seek to efficiently invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved consumer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. We are investing in Amazon Web Services, which provides technology services that give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. A continuing challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S.

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economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

In addition, the remeasurement of our 6.875% PEACS and intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by marketplace sellers. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services, Amazon Enterprise Solutions, co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they align the interests of our shareholders and employees. In managing shareholder dilution, we include all stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards and in-the-money and out-of-the-money stock options. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 446 million

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and 435 million at June 30, 2008 and December 31, 2007. These amounts exclude 8 million and 14 million shares issuable upon conversion of our long-term debt at June 30, 2008 and December 31, 2007.

We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our customer experience fixed costs include the costs necessary to run our technology infrastructure, build, enhance, and add features to our websites and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to publisher and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average, our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 13 for both Q2 2008 and Q2 2007. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by other sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 58 and 54 for Q2 2008 and Q2 2007. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by other sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.

Our spending in technology and content will increase as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We will continue to invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved consumer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. We are investing in Amazon Web Services, which provides technology services that give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. A continuing challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S. economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also

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believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

In addition, the remeasurement of our 6.875% PEACS and intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by marketplace sellers. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services, Amazon Enterprise Solutions, co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they align the interests of our shareholders and employees. In managing shareholder dilution, we include all stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards and in-the-money and out-of-the-money stock options. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 435 million at both March 31, 2008 and December 31, 2007. These amounts exclude 14 million shares issuable upon conversion of our long-term debt.

We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our customer experience fixed costs include the costs necessary to run our technology infrastructure, build, enhance, and add features to our websites and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to publisher and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

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Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average, our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 13 for both Q1 2008 and Q1 2007. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by other sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 53 and 47 for Q1 2008 and Q1 2007. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by other sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.

Our spending in technology and content will increase as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We will continue to invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved consumer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. We are investing in Amazon Web Services, which provides technology services that give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. A continuing challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S. economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

In addition, the remeasurement of our 6.875% PEACS and intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our customer-facing websites primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by marketplace sellers. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by other sellers. We also offer services such as Amazon Web Services, Amazon Enterprise Solutions, co-branded credit cards, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they align the interests of our shareholders and employees. In managing shareholder dilution, we include all stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards and in-the-money

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and out-of-the-money stock options. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 435 million and 436 million at December 31, 2007 and 2006. These amounts exclude 14 million shares issuable upon conversion of our long-term debt. In 2007, we repurchased 6 million shares of our common stock under a repurchase program authorized by our Board of Directors.

We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our fixed costs include the costs necessary to run our technology infrastructure, build, enhance, and add features to our websites and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to publisher and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average, our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 13, 13, and 14 for 2007, 2006, and 2005. Inventory turnover has declined slightly over the last several years, primarily due to category expansion and changes in product mix, and our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by other sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 57, 53, and 54 for 2007, 2006 and 2005. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by other sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.

Our spending in technology and content will increase as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We will continue to invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved customer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the customer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. Amazon Web Services provides technology services that give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. Our challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be

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higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S. economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

In addition, the remeasurement of our 6.875% PEACS and intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.

For additional information about each line item summarized above, refer to Item 8 of Part II, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data—Note 1—Description of Business and Accounting Policies.”

Overview

Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered on our websites include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by third parties. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by third parties. We also offer services such as Amazon Enterprise Solutions, co-branded credit cards, web services, fulfillment, and miscellaneous marketing and promotional offers.

Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow¹ per share. Free cash flow is driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital and capital expenditures. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales through our websites and efficiently managing our operating costs, offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives, which generally require us to hire additional software engineers, computer scientists, and merchandisers. To increase product sales, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery times, increasing selection, increasing product categories, expanding product information, improving ease of use, and earning customer trust. We generally focus on growing gross profit and operating profit dollars rather than maximizing margin percentages. Because we have deferred tax assets from net operating loss carryforwards, the free cash flow impact from income taxes paid is currently less than our income tax provision.

We also seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We

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utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe they better align the interests of our shareholders and employees. Restricted stock units result in charges to our consolidated statements of operations based on the fair value of the awards at the grant date recorded on an accelerated basis over the underlying service periods, net of estimated cancellations. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 435 million and 436 million at September 30, 2007 and December 31, 2006. These totals include all stock awards outstanding, without regard for estimated forfeitures, consisting of vested and unvested awards, and in-the-money and out-of-the-money stock options. In Q1 2007, we repurchased 6 million shares of our common stock under a repurchase program authorized by our Board of Directors.

We seek to reduce our customer experience variable costs per unit and work to leverage our customer experience fixed costs. Our customer experience variable costs include product costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, and most aspects of our marketing costs. Our customer experience fixed costs include the costs necessary to build, enhance, and add features to our websites and build and optimize our fulfillment centers. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally increase depending on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct to publisher and manufacturer sourcing, maximize discounts available to us from suppliers and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.

Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle². On average, our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from our customers before our payments to suppliers come due. Inventory turnover³ was 12 and 13 for Q3 2007 and Q3 2006. Inventory turnover has declined over the last several years, primarily due to changes in product mix and our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability. We expect some variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by several factors, including our product mix, our mix of third-party sales, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability, our investment in new geographies and product lines, and the extent we choose to utilize outsource fulfillment providers. Accounts payable days⁴ were 62 and 63 for Q3 2007 and Q3 2006. We expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since it is affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of third-party sales, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of negotiating better pricing from our suppliers in exchange for shorter payment terms.

Our spending in technology and content will increase as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employees involved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We will continue to invest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience and improve our process efficiencies. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved consumer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace through lower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. Our challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances in technology.

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Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales, gross profit, and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S. economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long term. We also believe it is important to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.

In addition, the remeasurement of our 6.875% PEACS and intercompany balances can result in significant gains and charges associated with the effect of movements in currency exchange rates. Currency volatilities may continue, which may significantly impact (either positively or negatively) our reported results and consolidated trends and comparisons.