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Amazon (AMZN -1.31%) shares are sliding on Monday morning, dipping as much as 3.3% below Friday’s closing price. That may not sound like much, but this single-digit percentage drop is taking roughly $30 billion off the e-commerce and cloud computing titan’s trillion-dollar market cap.
A Politico report says that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reviewing Amazon’s business from several angles and may soon take enforcement action against the company. The potential lawsuits under consideration range from privacy worries to antitrust issues.
Politico’s anonymous insiders say that regulators have privacy concerns about Amazon’s smart home products, like the camera-equipped Ring doorbell and the Alexa-powered line of Echo assistants.
The FTC has also looked at the company’s retail operations since 2019, as the Amazon Prime subscription program and heaps of market data give it unfair advantages against other online retailers.
Both the antitrust and privacy reviews spill over into Amazon’s $1.7 billion buyout of household robots maker iRobot (IRBT -0.98%) too. The commission reportedly worries that Amazon will give iRobot devices such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner and the Aeris air purifier more marketing support than competing brands in Amazon’s shopping portals. At the same time, the first Wi-Fi-equipped Roomba shipped in 2017, and the FTC sees Amazon garnering lots of privacy-dodging personal data from these millions of smart home devices.
iRobot’s stock price dropped as much as 0.9% on Monday morning.
None of these concerns are exactly new, but it has been awhile since the FTC made any noticeable effort to punish Amazon for its suspected misdeeds and potentially unsavory plans. The Politico report is an independent article, with no confirmation or direct quotes from Amazon or the FTC. However, it was still a harsh wake-up call to investors who were forgetting about these regulatory reviews. As a result, a fairly small stock price drop seems appropriate today.
In the long run, none of the reported reviews matter unless and until the FTC lets the lawsuits fly. That’s not a foregone conclusion. For example, the FTC never filed suit to block Amazon’s buyout of One Medical e-health group, allowing that $3.9 billion merger to close last month.
Until the FTC’s legal filings come along, I see no reason to panic about these regulatory reviews. And even then, the devil’s in the details. So until we can read copies of the FTC’s fully developed complaints in a lawsuit filing, I see Amazon as a great buy.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Anders Bylund has positions in Amazon.com. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon.com and iRobot. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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