American multinational technology company Amazon rejoined the $1 trillion club, a milestone it first hit in 2018, after posting Q4 2019 earnings report last Thursday.
Sales came in at $87.4 billion, up 21 percent from a year earlier and above what Wall Street predicted. Earnings per share were up to $6.47 in Q4, beating $4.11 expectations, and operating income rose 2.5% year-over-year, reaching a high of $3.88 billion.
As noted in the report, Amazon Prime subscribers have reached an all-time high of 150 million, a 50 million bump since 2018, despite the fee increase in the interim. Benefits like one day shipping and the vast Prime streaming catalog proved irresistible for customer.
In a statement, CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that Prime members have watched twice as much Prime Video content as 2018, adding that “members now have free two-hour grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market in more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns.”
AWS, the high-margin cloud computing division that has been a big source of Amazon’s profits in recent years, also increased its revenue in the quarter, by 34 percent to $9.95 billion.
The Seattle-based internet giant also continued its hiring spree during the quarter, signing up 48 thousand new employees for a total of 798 thousand.
The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also added around $8 billion to his fortune, as the company hit market capitalizations above $1 trillion. Bezos' total net worth now sits at $124 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.
Besides Amazon, public corporations that have hit market capitalization above $1 trillion are Saudi Aramco ($2.1 trillion), Apple Inc. ($1.42 trillion), Microsoft Corp. ($1.27 trillion), PetroChina ($1.19 trillion), and Google’s parent company Alphabet ($1 trillion).
