Coupang

Coupang's newer businesses are food delivery, streaming and Farfetch. Together they grew 23 percent to 1.6 billion dollars this quarter, or 27 percent once you strip out currency swings. Their losses also shrank by 23 million dollars, so these bets are getting bigger and cheaper to run at the same time.

Headline sales rose 7 percent to about 10 billion dollars, but a weaker Korean won is hiding the real speed. Measured in Korea's own currency, sales grew 11 percent and the core shopping business grew 8 percent. Shoppers are also spending more, about 332 dollars per customer this quarter, up 3 percent.

Coupang lost 501 million dollars this quarter, compared to a 95 million dollar profit a year ago. A July fire that badly damaged a big warehouse in Incheon, Korea, accounts for about 180 million dollars of that loss. Even without the fire it would still have lost 321 million dollars, so the problem goes deeper than one bad event.

Over the past year, Coupang spent 409 million dollars more than it brought in. The year before, it had 1.3 billion dollars of spare cash. Profit from the core shopping business also fell 45 percent to 385 million dollars. A fire, a data breach and big growth bets are all draining the cushion at once.