Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTAlex SiroisSat, July 18, 2026 at 3:26 PM GMT+2 4 min readQuick ReadAmazon's (AMZN) $25B bond drew $62B in demand, and at 35x interest coverage, the company keeps $102B cash free for AI and acquisitions.Amazon's Q1 EPS beat consensus by 61% for its fifth straight win, outpacing Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) on operating leverage.TTM free cash flow collapsed 95% to $1.2B as capex surged, but AWS's $364B contractual backlog makes the spending already economically justified.Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.I keep hitting the buy button on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and the $25 billion bond sale gave me three fresh reasons to keep going. I have owned this stock for years, and every time management pulls a lever this obvious, I add. The market treated the debt raise like a warning. I read it like a receipt.Den Dubinko / Shutterstock.comThe Cost of Capital Arbitrage I Keep Waiting ForThe 10-year Treasury sits at 4.55%, in the 94th percentile of the past 12 months. That yield looks rich in a vacuum, yet Amazon's interest coverage ratio is 35.17x, which means the company can absorb this coupon in its sleep. Peak demand on the offering hit $62 billion, 2.48 times oversubscribed, across eight tranches maturing from 2029 to 2066. Institutional buyers effectively fought each other to hand Amazon 40-year money. That preserves the $101.82 billion of cash on the balance sheet for acquisitions, chip design, and whatever Andy Jassy sees next. Debt funds the concrete. Cash stays weaponized.Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.The Capex Is Already Pre-SoldThis is where I get loud with friends who think Amazon is overspending. The roughly $200 billion 2026 capex plan funds physical data center capacity backed by AWS's $364 billion commercial backlog. AWS grew 28% year over year in Q1, the fastest in 15 quarters, at a 37.7% operating margin. Anthropic is contracted for up to 5 GW of Trainium capacity. OpenAI committed roughly 2 GW starting 2027. Project Rainier is deploying 500,000-plus Trainium2 chips. The chips business already runs at a $20 billion annual revenue rate, growing triple digits. The bonds pay for buildings that are already leased in economic terms.Peak Debt, Then the Runway ClearsManagement framing this as the final debt tap of the year removes an overhang I was already discounting. Operating cash flow hit $139.51 billion in 2025 against $131.82 billion of capex. Debt-to-assets improved from 30.3% in 2022 to 18.7% in 2025 even while the asset base doubled. Once capex intensity normalizes, free cash flow snaps back and the multiple has room to breathe.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info