The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

How Margin Expansion and New S-Curves Compound Together

When your core business gets cheaper to run, every new bet you place gets cheaper to fund.

Last year at this time, I shared my enthusiasm and optimism for Amazon's future. Today, I have even more. The reasons are many, but start with the progress we've made in our financial results and customer experiences, and extend to our continued innovation and the remarkable opportunities in front of us. In 2023, Amazon's total revenue grew 12% year-over-year from $514B to $575B. Operating income in 2023 improved 201% YoY from $12.2B (an operating margin of 2.4%) to $36.9B (an operating margin of 6.4%). Trailing Twelve Month Free Cash Flow adjusted for equipment finance leases improved from -$12.8B in 2022 to $35.5B (up $48.3B). While we've made meaningful progress on our financial measures, what we're most pleased about is the continued customer experience improvements across our businesses. In 2023, Amazon delivered at the fastest speeds ever to Prime members, with more than 7 billion items arriving same or next day. For the first time since 2018, we reduced our cost to serve on a per unit basis globally. In the U.S. alone, cost to serve was down by more than $0.45 per unit YoY. Amazon's Advertising progress remains strong, growing 24% YoY from $38B in 2022 to $47B in 2023. In Generative AI, we invented and delivered Amazon Bedrock, letting companies leverage existing Foundation Models to build GenAI applications, and launched Amazon Q, our most capable coding assistant. We have increasing conviction that Prime Video can be a large and profitable business on its own, buoyed by compelling exclusive content and the addition of advertising reaching over 200 million monthly viewers.

On April 11, 2024, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy published his annual letter to shareholders covering 2023 performance. Operating income jumped 201% year-over-year to $36.9B, and free cash flow swung from -$12.8B to +$35.5B. The letter is Jassy making the case that Amazon's 2023 wasn't just a good year — it was proof that a deliberate structural fix is now working at scale.

The hidden move here is sequencing. Jassy leads with the cost-per-unit reduction — 'down by more than $0.45 per unit' in the U.S. alone, the first improvement since 2018 — before talking about growth. That ordering is intentional. A business that grows on a broken cost structure just loses money faster. Amazon fixed the foundation first, then accelerated. The 201% operating income jump is the reward for that sequencing, not the strategy itself.

With the core economics repaired, Jassy then points to three growth vectors: Advertising ($47B, up 24%), Generative AI tooling via Bedrock and Q, and Prime Video's ad-supported model reaching 200 million monthly viewers. Each one uses infrastructure Amazon already owns. This is classic platform leverage — the same logistics network, cloud stack, and content library now generating new revenue lines without proportional new cost. The moat widens not by spending more, but by selling more things across the same fixed base.

Before you chase your next revenue line, audit your cost per unit or cost per customer served. If it's rising, adding revenue will hide the problem, not fix it. Pick one quarter to focus only on that number — find where waste lives in your delivery, ops, or support — and cut it measurably. Only after you've stabilized that should you layer on the next growth bet. Jassy's letter gives you the sequence in plain numbers.

SEC EDGAR Filing
SEC EDGAR · EX-99.1
AMAZON COM INC · EX-99.1 · filed 2024-04-11 · Accession 0001104659-24-045915
April 11, 2024
Public domain
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