How $62 Million Vanished (Poof!) From Amazon's Balance Sheet

When we last left Amazon.com (AMZN Quote) the issue was that some of last quarter's revenue was little more than a bookkeeping entry, or air, and that the company hadn't bothered to tell anybody. The bottom line, from one analyst's point of view, was that if Amazon hadn't told anybody about that, what else wasn't it saying?

Well, try this: In the three weeks between the time Amazon reported its first-quarter financials on April 26 and the filing of its 10-Q on May 15, deferred revenue of $62 million suddenly disappeared -- like, poof! -- from the balance sheet. However, there was no press release disclosing the change, and the company didn't even call attention to it in the 10-Q. You wouldn't have caught it unless you had compared the balance sheets in the earnings press release and the 10-Q. ...