Amazon has nearly doubled their employee base in the last two years, and most of those hires were higher-paid "corporate" employees rather than fulfillment center hires. The expense structure may look the same but it's not, they've clearly explained that each time they do an earnings call and the market has backed them up on it - their stock has solidly outperformed Apple's for several years.
There's an earnings quality argument here as well: As a consumer electronics company, Apple's long term value is predicated heavily on their ability to stay "on trend" and keep delivering hot new products. Amazon doesn't have that pressure - whatever's popular, they'll be selling, and earning from things like government contracting are fairly stable as well. You get more market cap per dollar of earnings if those earnings are more likely to persist long-term.
I see their changes, now, with their latest results. It doesn't look like the market really expected the lack of profit though, so it will be interesting to see where the stock ends up soon.
I'd like to own amazon stock for the long haul, I'm just not into spending quite the premium that the market wanted recently. If they get beaten down enough, it'll be time to buy.
There's an earnings quality argument here as well: As a consumer electronics company, Apple's long term value is predicated heavily on their ability to stay "on trend" and keep delivering hot new products. Amazon doesn't have that pressure - whatever's popular, they'll be selling, and earning from things like government contracting are fairly stable as well. You get more market cap per dollar of earnings if those earnings are more likely to persist long-term.