Amazon hit record profit, but it's not about selling you random stuff

Amazon is a massive company that brings in a ton of money but doesn't necessarily make much profit.

That's due to its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. He doesn't really care that much about making a profit. He's said as much publicly. 

This tends to make it difficult to predict just how Amazon will do in comparison to expectations for its quarterly earnings reports. Amazon's earning reports tend to be some of the most exciting, but are also frustrating for analysts and investors.

On Thursday, Bezos had yet another surprise for them -- a massive chunk of profit from its first quarter of 2016. 

Makes for quite a magic trick.

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The numbers: Amazon reported $1.07 of profit per share, almost doubling the general consensus expectation. The company's total sales (revenue) hit $29.1 billion, also besting estimates.

Then there's Amazon Web Services, better known as AWS. This part of its business provides cheap cloud computing for other companies and has been one of Amazon's fastest growing areas. Instead of having to invest a ton of money into servers and other hardware, companies can use Amazon's. 

That business alone brought in $2.57 billion in the start of 2016.

The strength of Amazon's businesses -- and a big part of why it's profitable now -- is that Bezos has spent years investing money back into different parts of its company. To his credit, Bezos has been quite public that this was the plan, and investors could come along for the ride if they want.

AWS is a prime example of how that plan looks when it works, and could serve as a model for another burgeoning Amazon business -- its standalone streaming video operation. 

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That means there will be some quarters like this one, when Amazon ends up with a mountain of profit and looks like it's going to reward investors consistently. Maybe that's what will happen going forward. 

Or maybe Bezos will shift gears and start plowing that money back into new Amazon businesses.

"The quarters when Amazon is profitable may just be another experiment," asset manager Barry Ritholtz wrote after Amazon turned a nice profit just last quarter.

There is some reason to think Bezos has changed gears a bit. Amazon has now begun something of a streak of profitable quarters.

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But it's Bezos, so who knows. 

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