James Delahunty
4 Sep 2018 13:45
Amazon has become the second firm to reach a $1 trillion market valuation after Apple reached the milestone a month ago.
The online retail giant's shares briefly reached a high of $2050.2677 as its total market value soared over $1 trillion. At the current rate, Amazon is set to overtake Apple which reached the trillion dollar valuation milestone on August 3 this year.
In the past 15 months, Amazon's stock price has doubled as investors have been impressed by the company's diverse business success. Amazon has pushed into almost every area of retail as well as digital streaming, financial services and cloud computing. Amazon's cloud services accounted for 20 percent of total revenue (55 percent of operating income) in Q2, 2018.
It took Amazon 21 years as a public company to reach a $1 trillion valuation, having gone public in 1997 at $1.50 on a split-adjusted basis. Jeff Bezos originally founded Amazon as an online book retailer in 1994 and ran it out of his garage.
Apple was a public company for 38 years before reaching last month's historic valuation. Amazon's revenue is expected to grow by 32 percent this year, ahead of a 14.9 percent prediction for Apple.