Amazon (AMZN) Stock Jumps 13% as Record Holiday Sales Send Capitalization toward $1 Trillion

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Tolu Ajiboye
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Amazon has released impressive earnings figures for its fourth quarter. The figures show that the company beat its expectations for what its efforts for the quarter would yield. Amazon announced that its holiday sales profit crossed $3 billion. In response, Amazon stock jumped 13%, pushing its valuation into the neighborhood of $1 trillion.

Amazon Holiday Sales Quarter Highlights

Amazon reported a total profit of $3.3 billion for the holiday quarter recently concluded with a total revenue of $87.4 billion. The company also delivered earnings per share at $6.47. Both figures for earnings per share and total revenue show significant growth from the same period the year before. Amazon had previously paid $6.04 per share on a total of $72.38 billion figure.

Amazon also beat the Wall Street average expectation which put the company’s total revenue for the quarter at $86.03 billion. The market’s earnings per share expectation was also a lot less at $4.04.

How Amazon Hit Impressive Holiday Sales Figures

The company’s previous quarter was a little disappointing, to say the least. The third quarter saw a drop for the first time in the 2 years since Amazon had maintained a profit streak. Third-quarter figures showed earnings per share of $4.23, falling from $5.75 year-over-year. Even analysts predicted earnings per share of $4.59.

The disappointing figures from the third quarter were due to an increase in spending. The company, last year, invested in personnel and equipment, to shorten delivery time for Prime subscribers. Although this put a damper on its third-quarter figures, Amazon obviously bounced back in the fourth quarter.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke on the success of Prime. Bezos said:

“Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding – more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world. We’ve made Prime delivery faster – the number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime’s free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year.”

Amazon’s market capitalization now sits over $927 billion. If it holds up the surge, Amazon could join Apple, Microsoft and Google‘s Alphabet, in the $1 trillion club.

This growth in the fourth quarter is also seen in Amazon’s ad business. Revenue from ads alone hit $4.78 billion, jumping 41.1%. However, its Whole Foods business isn’t doing very well with in-person sales hitting $4.36 billion, a 1% fall.

Amazon’s Next Quarter

Amazon’s net holiday sales climbed 21% with net income hitting 8%. This growth came with an increase in employee count, by about 23%. Its international arm, in general, was also able to reduce loss to $617 million. These figures make for a good picture of the company’s next quarter.

Amazon also seems to be a bit shielded from the coronavirus, at least for now. It has announced restrictions and will focus more on its Indian market.

Author: Tolu Ajiboye

Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge. When he's not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.

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