Amazon continues to inch closer to reaching a $1 trillion market cap after closing at another all-time high on Wednesday at $1998.10. The tech giant is currently trading at $2,013 per share as of Thursday 11:30am Eastern time
With a current market cap of $980.6 billion, some are speculating that it could be the second trillion-dollar company, after Apple hit the $1 trillion mark earlier this month.
Given the company started off as an online book vendor and has now branched into all types of e-commerce, web hosting, and video streaming, CNBC’s Melissa Lee asks, “how much bigger can Amazon get?”
Going further, Tim Seymour questioned “What is Amazon? … Is it a retail stock, is it a tech stock, is it a consumer staples stock? To me, the most aggressive moves that Amazon has made have really been in this trillion-and-a-half dollar consumer staples/consumables space, where they’re competing with Walmart, with Target, with Kroger, with a lot of mom-and-pop stores, and again, it’s a low-margin business. That, to me, is where the disruption lies.”
On the other hand, Pete Najarian claims, “I view Amazon as a tech company, and the reason I say that is AWS. That’s where the margins are.”
Yesterday, Amazon rebuffed criticism from Senator Bernie Sanders, who had recently lambasted Amazon for low wages and poor working conditions.
In a statement released online, Amazon said on Wednesday, “Senator Sanders continues to spread misleading statements about pay and benefits. Amazon is proud to have created over 130,000 new jobs last year alone. In the U.S., the average hourly wage for a full-time associate in our fulfillment centers, including cash, stock, and incentive bonuses, is over $15/hour before overtime. We encourage anyone to compare our pay and benefits to other retailers.”
Some of the main consumer discretionary ETFs were buoyed Wednesday by Amazon’s rise. Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEArca: XLY) was up almost 1% yesterday, as was Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF (NYSEArca: VCR), both of which are weighted almost 25% by Amazon alone.
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