Bezos pet projects blamed for huge losses in Q2 for Amazon

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is becoming increasin🌸gly obvious about his willingness to saddle shareholders with losses — big losses.

Amazon’s stock tumbled 10 percent in after-hours trades Thursday after the online retail giant posted its biggestꦰ quarterly loss since 2012 and said operating losses will grow far steeper in the current quarter, possibly topping $800 million.

Heavy selling after-hours sent Amazo🤪n shares as much as 20 percent belo🎉w where they started this year, capping months of investor frustration over Bezos’ free-spending ways.

Bezos has ruthlessly expanded Amazon by undercutting competitors on price, 🔯and has spent lavishly to roll out new warehouses to bolster the company’s distribution capabilities to include Sunday delivery.

Amazon has likewise unleashed a plethora of new services such as grocery delivery, a set-top box, music streaming and unlimited e-books, even as it unveils new gadgets to compete with tech rivals like Appl💖e and Samsung.

To offset his spending spree, Bezos has been squeezing vendors hard, most recently landing Amazon in a public spat with publisher Hachette over th🌊e future pricing🃏 of e-books.

Nevertheless, the company revealed Thursday that ther𝕴e is no end in sight to the cash blไeed.

Wall Street was caught off guard in particular by a forecast for an operating loss between $410 million and $810 million in the current quarter — more than half of which could be attributable to Bezos’ taste for high-priced talent.

Indeed, Amazon said $410 million of♎ the current quarter’s ✨expected operating loss will come from stock-based compensation and other items.

Stock-based perks for employees totaled $391 million during the most recent quarter, helping drive a net loss of $126 million, or 27 cents a share, compared with a loss of $7 million, or 2 cents a share, a y🌊ear earlier.

Analysts had expected a loss of just 15 🐽cents a share. Amazon shares, which had closed at $358.61 in regular trading Thursday, lost more than 10 percent after the results were posted.

The loss came despite a 23-pe🅰rcent surge in revenue to $19.34 billion, which was in line with Wall Street’s expectations.

On Friday, Amazon will begin selling the Fire phone, a competitor to Apple’s iPhone that has gotten mixed reviews for its high price and a slew of feat𝓰ures that are prone to glitches.

The new gadget took three years to devꦫelop and thou💎sands of Amazon programmers and designers worked on the project.