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 $574.8 billion in 2023. The company reports revenue under three broad heads—North America, International and AWS, which generated 61.4%, 22.8% and 15.8% 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

Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Amazon a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in February 2014 would be worth $10,069.21, or a 906.92% gain, as of February 23, 2024, according to our calculations. Investors should note that this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.

Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 177.03% and gold's return of 47.01% over the same time frame.

Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for AMZN.

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

Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 10.67%, and there have been 15 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2024 compared to none lower. 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