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

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For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. Not only can it impact your investment portfolio, but it can also help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to 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 requires research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Amazon ten years ago, you're likely feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in December 2014 would be worth $14,477.52, or a 1,347.75% gain, as of December 30, 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 185.85% and gold's return of 109.55% over the same time frame.

Analysts are forecasting more upside for AMZN too.

Amazon is gaining on solid Prime momentum owing to ultrafast delivery services and strong content portfolio. Strengthening relationship with third-party sellers is a positive. Growing adoption of AWS services portfolio is aiding AMZN’s cloud dominance. Robust advertising business is also contributing well. Amazon’s strong global presence remains a key growth driver. Deepening focus on generative AI is a major plus. Also, improving Alexa skills along with robust smart home products offerings are tailwinds. Growing capabilities in grocery, pharmacy, healthcare and autonomous driving are other positives. The company issued positive Q4 2024 guidance fueling investor enthusiasm. We expect 2024 net sales to increase 10.7% from 2023. However, macroeconomic challenges remain and rising transportation and fulfillment center costs are concerns.

Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 7.63%, and there have been 16 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2024 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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