Amazon Is In A 'Temporary Phase' Of Wanting To Show Cash Flow

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN is often criticized for not appeasing investors, but that changed over the last quarter. Experts believed the firm's fourth quarter results were a sign that the company could earn a lot of money when it was ready to start taking profits.

"I think what Amazon is showing is, hey, if we just control expenses a smidge, we can produce earnings power," Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, told Benzinga in January.

Cody Willard, chairman of Scutify (a financial social network), expects that trend to continue.

"We're in at least a temporary phase of [CEO Jeff] Bezos wanting to show cash flow and earnings potential again," Willard told Benzinga, adding that he expects the stock to be roughly in-line with analyst estimates. "I would expect…better-than-expected bottom line. Whether the stock pops after that is, of course, a very different question."

Related Link: This Analyst Says Amazon Prime Will Reach 45 Million Subscribers In 2015

Dan Miller, senior analyst and founder of Opus Research, said that he is "really impressed" with what Amazon is doing for order fulfillment and the way it is "changing the distribution chain."

"It's also very complementary of the stuff they're doing with Echo and speech recognition," Miller told Benzinga. "Somewhere the plan is working. [They're] establishing new ways to capture orders and deliver goods."

Miller noted that Amazon has "very patient investors."

"Nothing has discouraged them from trying the innovations on some of the classic activities that retailers have to do," he added. "New ways to capture orders, new ways to deliver. [Amazon is] testing people's acceptance."

Trunk Delivery

Amazon has a new delivery idea for consumers who aren't at home: the company wants to leave packages inside the trunk of a customer's automobile.

"They're experimenting," said Willard. "We're a long way from that thing going into the marketplace, much less mainstream."

Willard said that in two years -- when trunk delivery could potentially arrive -- there will be more self-driving cars and other autonomous features.

"It's all sort of [converging]," Willard added. "[But] it doesn't sound like this is something that is going to come to the market as a finished product. This might be experimenting with the technologies of controlling a car remotely and that's part of it."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.