Amazon shares rose slightly on Friday after smashing Q1 analyst estimates.- Quarterly profit tripled for the e-commerce retailer at a time when uncertainty was rampant.
- "It appears to be a question of when, and not if, it becomes a $2 trillion company," one analyst said.
Amazon's shares rose 2% in regular trading on Friday after reporting first-quarter results that beat analyst expectations in its fourth record quarter in a row.
Quarterly revenue rose 44% to $108.52 billion, boosted by strong growth in e-commerce and AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud-services.
Profits meanwhile tripled to $8.1 billion, far above the previous quarter's $2.5 billion. Amazon delivered remarkable results even compared to the lofty expectations analysts held for the stock, DailyFX strategist Peter Hanks said.
Investors were wondering if Amazon's growth would slow as economies re-open and shops return to business as usual, said Martin Garner, chief operating officer at analyst firm CCS Insight. But there was no sign of that, despite the lack of a Prime Day in the quarter to boost sales, he said.
Beating analyst estimates on both profits and sales and attracting 200 million Prime subscribers in April was a staggering feat for the company that is one of the biggest winners of the pandemic.
"Amazon Prime Video is now 10 years old and saw 175 million users during the last year, starting to get close to the numbers Netflix has achieved," Garner said. "Prime video is a key benefit for Prime members, and Amazon is continuing to invest heavily in original content as well as in sports rights to expand the catalogue."
The AWS cloud platform is 15 years old is now a $54 billion per year business, growing consistently at over 30% per year.
"After a slight slowdown in the pace of growth during the pandemic, in which troubled businesses offset increased adoption of cloud services, stronger growth has resumed," Garner said. "This is driven by an increased pace of digitalization across most sectors and by some badly hit sectors starting to build their business back up."
Adam Vettese, analyst at multi-asset investment platform eToro, said Amazon's shares are poised to break to a new all-time high at Friday's US market open, according to current indications.
"The move certainly looks justified given the company's results overnight, and it appears to be a question of when, and not if, it becomes a $2 trillion company," he said. "Even as founder and CEO,
Amazon's shares closed at $3,471.31 on Thursday, but were trading around $3,534.64 per share ahead at Friday's market open.