Reasons to Buy Amazon Stock

26.02.2024

With a market capitalization of $1.8 trillion and net sales of $575 billion in 2023, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is one of the most successful businesses on the planet. The company operates in a variety of consumer and business markets, which is a testament to its power.

Over the past 10 years, the stock has soared 907%. But I don’t think you’ve missed this milestone yet. Here are important reasons why you should buy this FAANG stock as if tomorrow never came.

The first and perhaps most obvious reason investors should rush to buy shares of this tech giant is because of how dominant it is. And in Amazon’s case, it’s a leader in several industries at once, which puts this business in a class of its own.

The company’s bread-and-butter segment remains its vast e-commerce marketplace, with 4.5 billion visitors to its website in January. Combining online shopping and third-party seller services, this division generated $114 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023. Despite macroeconomic factors, this figure grew 13% year-over-year.

According to Statista, Amazon accounts for 38% of all online spending in the U.S., well ahead of Walmart, which ranks second with a 6% share. As e-commerce continues to supplant brick-and-mortar stores over the next decade, it’s hard to find a bigger beneficiary than Amazon, thanks to its huge logistics footprint that provides fast and free delivery of millions of items.

The company’s management has successfully figured out another lucrative way to monetize all the activity on the e-commerce platform. I’m talking about advertising. It may surprise many, but Amazon’s digital advertising revenue will be $46.9 billion in 2023, up from $37.7 billion in 2022. When shoppers visit the site with the intention of making a purchase, Amazon can effectively place targeted ads.

In 2022, Amazon acquired MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, expanding its content production capabilities. This allowed Prime Video to become one of the most popular streaming options. Nielsen data shows that the service is second only to Netflix and YouTube when it comes to TV viewing time in the US.

Despite being a leader in the media and entertainment industry, the Walt Disney Company’s Disney+ and Hulu offerings rank below Prime Video on these engagement metrics. This speaks to how successful Amazon has become in the streaming industry, giving it another growth engine.

With all the focus on artificial intelligence (AI) over the past year, investors are likely familiar with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud services division. AWS accounts for about a third of the entire industry’s revenue, well ahead of rivals Microsoft Azure and Alphabet’s Google Cloud.

With the industry poised to grow rapidly over the next decade, AWS is well positioned to capture the majority of revenue. The need for enterprises to adopt artificial intelligence capabilities will also help AWS maintain its leadership. And with a strong operating margin in Q4 2023 (29.6%), it will be able to improve the profitability of the entire company.