A Quote by Jeff Bezos

Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s something that investors can spend. Investors can’t spend percentage margins.

Jeff Bezos

Quote Topics

Absolute Cash Cash Flow Could Dollar Flow Free Investors Lowering Margins Maximize One Of The Things Optimize Per Percentage Seeking Share Something Spend Take Things Want Would

Quote Author

Jeff Bezos
American - Businessman
Born: January 12, 1964

Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

Jeff Bezos

Value investors look at cash flows. If a company can maintain present cash flows for 5 or 6 years, it’s a good investment. Investors then just hope that those cash flows - and thus the company’s value - don’t decrease faster than they anticipate.

Peter Thiel

When you fall short of your internal forecast, two things happen: Costs go up as a percentage of sales, and margins go down.

Ted Waitt

If you look at academic studies, you can see that stock prices are most closely correlated with cash flow. It's such a straightforward number. Cash flow is what will drive shareholder returns.

Jeff Bezos

When I ran a small IT services business in the 1990s, it had strong recurring revenues - yet I couldn't accurately forecast cash flow for even the next few quarters. Small changes in the customer base or losing/hiring a few key employees could create massive swings in cash flow.

Mohnish Pabrai

Profit margins are probably the most mean-reverting series in finance, and if profit margins do not mean-revert, then something has gone badly wrong with capitalism. If high profits do not attract competition, there is something wrong with the system and it is not functioning properly.

Jeremy Grantham

Too often we measure everything and understand nothing. The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If you’re growing customer satisfaction, your global market share is sure to grow, too. Employee satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the pulse—the key vital sign of a company.

Jack Welch

We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.

Jeff Bezos

When all is said and done, what must be remembered is a newspaper is a business. It used to be a fabulous business that made extraordinary margins. It's now a very good business with appropriate margins.

Sam Zell

Our first use of cash is invested organically, secondly returning values our shareholders - roughly 100 percent free cash flow. And then thirdly, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships that complement our organic strategy. We are going to continue down that path.

Dennis Muilenburg

Back in the '60s and '70s, data were scarce, and while analysts knew that companies with fat gross margins lagged those with thin gross margins early in bull markets - and overachieved in the later phases - they couldn't do much about it.

Kenneth Fisher

In fact, the bigger the bill, the less likely you are to spend it. If you want to really save money, spend only cash and carry only fifty-dollar bills.

Jean Chatzky

I don't think profit margins are great when you're giving away free tickets!

Tana Mongeau

You can't look at the intrinsic value of gold as you can a business. Gold doesn't give you cash flow, and, at the end of the day, cash flow is what is important. Gold doesn't give you dividends.

Michael Lee-Chin

The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE's diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.

Jack Welch

Retail businesses have narrow margins. If you cut off a flow of young consumers, it's only a matter of time before the businesses struggle and fail.