Amazon.com Inc. shares posted their longest streak of daily losses in almost 20 years, as investors continue to question how much the e-commerce and cloud-computing company spends on capital expenditures.
Shares fell 0.4% on Friday, their ninth straight negative session. This is the longest losing streak for the stock since another nine-day drop that ended in July 2006. The stock shed 18% over the latest stretch, erasing about $463 billion in market valuation. Shares closed at their lowest since May.
Much of the stock’s drop can be traced to results earlier this month, after Amazon said it would spend $200 billion this year on data centers, chips and other equipment — far more than had been expected.
“If Amazon is now spending so much that it has negative cash flow, that’s a major concern and a red flag, and investors are increasingly viewing it as such,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise.
Investors have become increasingly concerned about how much big tech companies are spending on artificial intelligence, and the issue also weighed on both Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. The four biggest spenders — Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta Platforms Inc. — have together forecast capital expenditures of about $650 billion in 2026.
If these big tech companies “have negative or weaker cash flow on account of this spending, that’s a dynamic shift in how they should be valued, especially if we go through a period of market stress or AI evolves in a way that they or the market is not anticipating,” Saglimbene said.
Amazon shares are down about 17% this month, on pace for their biggest monthly percentage drop since April 2022. The Nasdaq 100 Index is down 3.2% in February.
Written by: Ryan Vlastelica @Bloomberg
The post “Amazon Mired in Longest Losing Streak Since 2006 on Capex Angst” first appeared on Bloomberg