Amazon.com said last night that high spending on warehouses and video production would drag on profits in the Christmas quarter.
The news disappointed investors who are weary of roller coaster results from the e-commerce giant and sent its shares down 6%.
Amazon is racing to ship packages as quickly as possible by building out its own delivery system.
It is making heavy US investments as well as pouring funds into foreign markets, and it also is building out its home electronics and video businesses, aiming to make it difficult for customers to leave.
As a consequence, the Seattle-based company projects operating income in the fourth quarter would range from nothing to $1.25 billion.
This wide span is considerably below Wall Street's $1.62 billion, according to market research firm FactSet StreetAccount.
Long known for heavy spending and losses, Amazon has come to turn a profit consistently, partly thanks to selling computer storage and services in the cloud.
Companies globally are turning to Amazon, the market leader, and rival Microsoft to host their data.
In the just-ended third quarter, Amazon's cloud business grew sales by 55% from a year earlier.
But investors are focused on rising costs for the company's retail operation.
Anticipating more shoppers this Christmas season, Amazon opened 18 warehouses in the third quarter and another five in the first few weeks of October. The company also grew its workforce by 38% in the third quarter.
In addition, the company has nearly doubled its spending on the creation and marketing of movies and TV shows in the second half of 2016.
Amazon's hope is that people will sign up for its Prime service to watch these videos - and in turn buy more goods from Amazon to make the $99-per-year subscription worth it.
Amazon's income tripled in the third quarter to $252m, or 52 cents per share, marking the company's sixth profitable quarter in a row. But analysts on average expected 78 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Amazon forecast net sales would rise as much as 27% in the current quarter to $45.5 billion.
