Amazon is firing on nearly all cylinders right now. After a rough 2022 — where operating margins collapsed to roughly 2% and the company posted a net loss — the business has staged a remarkable recovery, with 2025 annual revenue crossing $717 billion, operating margins climbing above 11%, and net margins pushing past 10%. The most recent quarter (ending June 2026) shows the momentum continuing, with operating margins hitting 13.7% and an extraordinary net margin of over 31%, though that quarterly net figure likely includes a large one-time gain and should be read cautiously. Capital spending is surging — Amazon invested $132 billion in capex in fiscal 2025, reflecting massive AI infrastructure and AWS buildout — but the balance sheet remains solid, with debt-to-equity under 0.17 and a current ratio above 1. In plain terms: Amazon has transformed from a thin-margin retailer into a high-margin, cash-generating machine, and it's reinvesting aggressively to stay ahead.
Snapshot & Big Picture
Amazon's financial story over the past decade is one of deliberate scale-building followed by a powerful profitability unlock. From 2016 to 2025, revenue grew from $136 billion to $717 billion. For most of that run, Amazon kept margins intentionally thin, plowing cash back into logistics, cloud infrastructure, and new business lines. The payoff is now visible: AWS, advertising, and third-party services have become high-margin engines that lift the entire company's profitability even as the core retail business remains capital-intensive.
| Fiscal Year | Revenue ($B) | EBITDA ($B) | Operating Margin | Net Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $136.0 | $12.3 | 3.1% | 1.7% |
| 2017 | $177.9 | $15.6 | 2.3% | 1.7% |
| 2018 | $232.9 | $27.8 | 5.3% | 4.3% |
| 2019 | $280.5 | $36.3 | 5.2% | 4.1% |
| 2020 | $386.1 | $48.1 | 5.9% | 5.5% |
| 2021 | $469.8 | $59.3 | 5.3% | 7.1% |
| 2022 | $514.0 | $54.2 | 2.4% | -0.5% |
| 2023 | $574.8 | $85.5 | 6.4% | 5.3% |
| 2024 | $638.0 | $121.4 | 10.8% | 9.3% |
| 2025 | $716.9 | $145.7 | 11.2% | 10.8% |
Latest Quarter Snapshot
The most recent quarterly filing (period ending June 30, 2026, filed July 31, 2026) is the most current data available — more recent than the annual figures above. Revenue for the quarter came in at $200.6 billion, putting Amazon on an annualized pace well above $800 billion. Operating margin reached 13.7%, a meaningful step up even from the strong 2025 full-year figure. The net margin of 31.2% is striking and almost certainly elevated by a non-recurring item (such as an investment gain); investors should treat that figure as a one-quarter anomaly rather than a run-rate expectation. The current ratio stood at 1.03 and debt-to-equity at 0.24. Capital expenditures for just this one quarter totaled $54.2 billion — a capex-to-revenue ratio of 27% — underscoring the intensity of Amazon's ongoing infrastructure investment cycle. Gross margin was reported at 0.6% for the quarter, though this figure appears to reflect a specific line-item definition in the 10-Q rather than the company's true blended gross profitability; it is included here as reported.
| Metric | Q2 2026 (Quarter Ending June 30, 2026) |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $200.6B |
| EBITDA | $47.4B |
| Operating Margin | 13.7% |
| Net Margin | 31.2% (likely includes non-recurring items) |
| Current Ratio | 1.03 |
| Debt-to-Equity | 0.24 |
| Capital Expenditures | $54.2B (27.0% of revenue) |
Profitability
The multi-year profitability trend tells a clear story of trough, recovery, and expansion. Amazon hit a rough patch in 2022 — a combination of over-hiring post-pandemic, surging logistics costs, and a write-down on its Rivian investment — that compressed operating margin to just 2.4% and produced the company's only net loss in this dataset. The subsequent recovery has been swift and substantial. By 2023, operating margin had bounced back to 6.4%; by 2024, it reached 10.8%; and in 2025, it hit 11.2% — the highest in at least a decade for full-year figures. EBITDA nearly tripled from $54 billion in 2022 to $146 billion in 2025. The key drivers are AWS margin expansion, the rapid scaling of Amazon's high-margin advertising business, and cost discipline across the retail segment. The direction is firmly upward.
Financial Health & Capital Expenditures
Amazon's balance sheet has strengthened considerably as profitability has recovered. Debt-to-equity stood at 0.17 at fiscal year-end 2025, down from 0.48 in 2022 and 0.90 in 2017 — a dramatic deleveraging trend. The current ratio has hovered just above 1.0 for most of the period, reflecting Amazon's business model (it collects from customers quickly but pays suppliers on longer terms), and it remains adequate if not lavish.
Capital expenditure trends deserve close attention. Amazon's capex has accelerated sharply in absolute terms and as a share of revenue:
| Fiscal Year | Capital Expenditures ($B) | CapEx as % of Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $7.8B | 5.7% |
| 2017 | $12.0B | 6.7% |
| 2018 | $13.4B | 5.8% |
| 2019 | $16.9B | 6.0% |
| 2020 | $40.1B | 10.4% |
| 2021 | $61.1B | 13.0% |
| 2022 | $63.6B | 12.4% |
| 2023 | $52.7B | 9.2% |
| 2024 | $83.0B | 13.0% |
| 2025 | $131.8B | 18.4% |
| Q2 2026 (single quarter) | $54.2B | 27.0% |
The jump from $83 billion in 2024 to $132 billion in 2025 — and then $54 billion in a single quarter in mid-2026 — signals a dramatic step-up in reinvestment intensity. This is primarily driven by AI infrastructure buildout for AWS, including data centers and custom chips. This level of capex is a double-edged sword: it positions Amazon as a dominant AI infrastructure provider for the long term, but it also means free cash flow will be significantly constrained in the near term. Investors should monitor whether this spending translates into accelerating AWS revenue and margin expansion over the next two to three years.
Growth
| Window | Start Year | End Year | Start Revenue | End Revenue | Revenue CAGR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3-Year | FY 2022 | FY 2025 | $514.0B | $716.9B | 11.7% |
| 5-Year | FY 2020 | FY 2025 | $386.1B | $716.9B | 13.2% |
| 10-Year | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | Not available |
Note on the 10-year CAGR: This figure is not available in the dataset provided. The pre-calculated data did not return a 10-year window result, which can occur when the filing history in the source data does not extend a full decade back with sufficient revenue comparators.
A 3-year revenue CAGR of 11.7% and a 5-year CAGR of 13.2% — both measured on a base that was already hundreds of billions of dollars — are genuinely impressive figures for a company of Amazon's scale. The slightly higher 5-year rate reflects the pandemic-era growth surge being captured in that window. Together, these figures confirm that Amazon is not merely a mature, slow-growth business; it is still compounding revenue at a double-digit rate while simultaneously expanding margins, a combination that relatively few companies at this size can demonstrate.
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