Cash generation is also slowing down. After three very lucrative fiscal years between 2018 and 2020, excluding acquisitions, Amazon burns $20 billion in 2021 and 2022.

The results of the first quarter of 2023 are in line with this trend, with a negative free cash flow of $9 billion. The market's patience here should quickly reach its limits, as Amazon Web Services' sales growth - the cloud operations - slows down significantly.

After a meteoric expansion over the last decade - from $3 billion to $83 billion, or more than 40% per year - AWS' growth rate is 16% in the quarter.A wave of layoffs will follow in the coming weeks, similar to what we see elsewhere in the technology sector.

AWS remains the only truly profitable segment of the group, and these profits subsidize the other activities in e-commerce, advertising, streaming, physical retail, etc.

Amazon's consolidated revenue still increased by 9.5% compared to Q1 2022, while operating margins improved significantly, from 3.1% to 3.8%. This confirms the group's remarkable resistance to inflation, verifiable among other things by the no less remarkable cost control in logistics operations.

The Amazon empire is the fifth largest stock market capitalization in the world at just over a trillion dollars, and is currently valued at roughly twice its turnover. If one neutralizes growth investments, all other things being equal, it would probably make sense to project a profitability between $50 and $60 billion.