History Says Amazon Stock's 2 Worst Years of the Past 15 Ended in Net Losses, and Both Rebounds Were Huge

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is running the largest capital-spending program in its history. The company expects about $220 billion in capital expenditures this year, an estimate CEO Andy Jassy raised from $200 billion in July.

And the spending runs well past this year. On Aug. 26, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Nvidia announced plans to put 2 million more Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) into AWS's infrastructure in 2027 and 2028, adding to plans to put more than 1 million GPUs in place starting in 2026, announced earlier this year.

So what has spending on this scale historically meant for the stock? Amazon has been here before, and the record is specific. In the past 15 years, the stock's two worst years were also years its bottom line went negative in the middle of a heavy investment stretch, and both were followed by enormous rebounds.

But the record holds exactly two instances. And the spending, on its own, was never what did the damage.

Image source: Getty Images.

The two bad years

In 2014, Amazon's capital expenditures reached $4.9 billion, up 42% year over year and about five times what the company spent in 2010. Sales still grew 20% to $89 billion. But operating income shrank to $178 million, and the company posted a net loss of $241 million. The stock fell 22% that year.

Then came 2015. Operating income rebounded more than tenfold to $2.2 billion, the company swung back to a profit, and the stock rose 118% -- its best year of the past 15.

The 2022 episode was bigger in every direction. Capital expenditures hit a then-record $58.3 billion, and even with revenue up 9% year over year, Amazon reported a $2.7 billion annual net loss. Operating income halved to $12.2 billion that year, and a $12.7 billion pre-tax valuation loss on the company's investment in Rivian Automotive dragged the bottom line into the red. The stock lost about half its value.

A year later, in 2023, net income came in at $30.4 billion, and the shares rebounded 81%.

Spending alone was never the signal

Amazon's other heavy spending years (2021, 2024, and 2025) saw capital expenditures of $55.4 billion, $77.7 billion, and $128.3 billion. The stock's returns in those years: up 2%, up 44%, and up 5%. Uninspiring in two cases, but nothing like 2014 or 2022.

Notably, even a loss year wasn't automatically fatal. In 2012, Amazon reported a small net loss of $39 million while investing heavily, and the stock rose 45% anyway.

What set 2014 and 2022 apart is that the income statement stopped keeping up. Operating profit nearly disappeared in 2014 as the spending rose. In 2022, operating income halved while the Rivian write-down pushed the bottom line negative. When investors could still see earnings growing through a build-out, they kept paying for the build-out.

Which setup is 2026?

On the cash-flow statement, today looks like the bad years. Amazon's trailing-12-month purchases of property and equipment, net of proceeds, have reached $169 billion -- up $66.1 billion from a year earlier, an increase the company attributes primarily to artificial intelligence (AI).

Free cash flow has flipped negative: an outflow of $7.6 billion over the trailing 12 months, against an inflow of $18.2 billion the year before. That capital spending now runs at about 22% of trailing revenue, arguably a heavier weight than the company carried through 2014 or 2022.

On the income statement, however, today looks nothing like them. Operating income rose 43% year over year to $27.5 billion in the second quarter of 2026. AWS revenue grew 37% year over year last quarter, its fastest pace since 2021, after accelerating through the first half of the year. The profit erosion that marked both bad years is, so far, absent. Of course, that could change -- depreciation from the build-out may weigh on margins in the quarters ahead.

So, does the market pay for a build-out while it's happening, or only after it stops? Amazon's history answers both ways. It has paid right through the biggest spending years, whenever profits kept growing underneath them. It punished the two years profits vanished, then handed the stock two of its best years once they returned. So far, the market is paying right through this one: shares trade near $266 as of this writing, up about 15% in 2026.

In short, the number to watch from here isn't the size of the capital budget. It's whether operating income keeps climbing while the budget runs. I'd start worrying if that growth stalls. But two instances of history say the spending alone isn't a reason to sell, and I think they have it right.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.