Back to top

Image: Bigstock

If You Invested $1000 in Amazon a Decade Ago, This is How Much It'd Be Worth Now

Read MoreHide Full Article

How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.

Another factor that can influence investors is FOMO, or the fear of missing out, especially with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to AMZN for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Amazon's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Amazon's main business drivers.

Amazon.com is one of the largest e-commerce providers, with sprawling operations in North America, now spreading across the globe.

Its online retail business revolves around the Prime program well-supported by the company’s massive distribution network. Further, the Whole Foods Market acquisition helped Amazon establish footprint in physical grocery supermarket space.

Amazon also enjoys dominant position in the cloud-computing market, particularly in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) space, thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is one of its high-margin generating businesses.

Amazon has also become a household name with its Alexa powered Echo devices. Artificial Intelligence (AI) backed Alexa is helping the company sell products and services.

Revenues were $513.98 billion in 2022. The company reports revenue under three broad heads—North America, International and AWS, which generated 61.5%, 23% and 15.6% of total revenues, respectively.

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Amazon targets three categories of customers—consumers, sellers and website developers. Consumers are offered variety, convenience and free delivery of goods displayed on the company’s websites.

The agreements with sellers are varied, enabling them to use the company’s websites to either sell their merchandise directly, or redirect customers to the sellers’ own branded websites. In case of the latter arrangement, Amazon earns a fee for the sales thus generated.

Competition comes in the form of traditional retailers, other online retailers, media companies, web portals, search engines, e-commerce companies and cloud computing service providers.

Bottom Line

Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For Amazon, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in August 2013 would be worth $9,614.21, or a gain of 861.42%, as of August 31, 2023, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.

In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 176.48% and the price of gold went up 32.72% over the same time frame.

Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for AMZN.

Amazon’s second quarter results were driven by Prime and AWS momentum. Strengthening AWS services portfolio and its growing adoption rate contributed well. Ultrafast delivery services and expanding content portfolio were beneficial. Strengthening relationship with third-party sellers was a positive. Robust advertising business contributed well. Improving Alexa skills along with robust smart home products offerings were tailwinds. The stock has outperformed the industry it belongs to on a year-to-date basis. Amazon’s strong global presence and solid momentum among the small and medium businesses remain other positives. Growing capabilities in grocery, pharmacy, healthcare and autonomous driving are other positives. Also, deepening focus on generative AI is a major tailwind. However, rising inflationary pressure remains a concern.

The stock is up 5.35% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 13 higher, for fiscal 2023. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

See More Zacks Research for These Tickers


Normally $25 each - click below to receive one report FREE:


Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) - free report >>

Published in