Amazon became the second big US company to hit $1 trillion in stock market value in the latest demonstration of the rising clout of American technology heavyweights.
The online retail giant breached the $1 trillion valuation near 1540 GMT when its share price hit $2,050.50. The Amazon landmark comes about a month after Apple hit the $1 trillion level, AFP reported.
Amazon retreated slightly after hitting the milestone, and near 1600 GMT, it was up 1.1% to $2,035.07.
Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who is now the world’s richest man, Amazon has grown exponentially from its roots as an online bookseller into a sector-crossing mastodon.
It competes directly with Walmart and is at the forefront of the latest trends in artificial intelligence with its Alexa personal assistant program.
Other ventures include its purchase in 2017 of Whole Foods Market and an increasingly vital presence in the production of movie and television shows that are made available to subscribers of its Amazon Prime streaming service.
The company’s employee count has soared to 575,000 as it has spread out into ever-more sectors of the economy.
Company profits, which long played second fiddle to revenue growth, have shown impressive gains. In the most recent quarter, Amazon reported $2.5 billion in profits, a 12-fold increase over the year-earlier period.
For years, investors buoyed Amazon’s stock without seeing the company generate significant profits, as it poured revenues back into the business: Building out its fulfillment center network, buying up companies, and developing new technologies.
But over the past year, Amazon has started turning up the dial on profits.
At the beginning of 2018, the company was worth just $580 billion. In the second quarter, the company’s net income ballooned to $2.5 billion, compared to $197 million in second quarter of 2017.
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