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In the third quarter of 2014, online retail giant Amazon Inc. posted one of its worst ever quarterly losses, prompting a sell-off in the company’s shares and heightening scrutiny of chief executive Jeff Bezos’ free-spending ways.

That quarter, the online retail giant lost US$437 million while spending a seemingly outsized US$2.42 billion on research and development, leading at least one analyst to question whether the company had too many “balls in the air.”

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When Amazon reports 2016 third-quarter results this Thursday after the bell, that R&D figure will likely have ballooned to nearly US$4 billion — but don’t expect investors to complain.

Since that ugly quarter, the company’s shares have rallied nearly three-fold, to $834.34 Tuesday afternoon from US$284.40 the day after those results were released. And it is Bezos’ massive bets in R&D that are helping to drive the company forward, analysts say.