Amazon shares dropped by 7% last Friday following a disappointing quarterly report.
Amazon said that its revenue in the third quarter of the year had risen by 29% to $56.6 billion. Profits had risen from $256 million to $2.9 billion. However, the increase was not enough to satisfy Wall Street’s expectations. Investors accustomed to larger rates of growth were unimpressed by Amazon’s forecast of $2.1 billion in profits this holiday season.
The fall in value meant that Microsoft Corp (MSFT) reclaimed its place as second-most valuable company in the United States. Last Wednesday the computing stalwart delivered better quarterly profits than expected, largely driven by its cloud computing arm Microsoft Azure. Shares went up 4% to a total stock market value of $823 billion, while Amazon came in at $805 billion.
AMZN’s stock market value had hit an all-time high at $902 billion this July, when Amazon announced a turnover of over $4 billion in product during its annual Prime Day sale. Prime members purchased more than 100 million items and the company received record numbers of Prime sign-ups. Among best-sellers were Amazon’s own Fire, Echo and Kindle products.
Apple Inc (AAPL) continues to lead the stock market at over $1 trillion USD after crossing that threshold in early August. The landmark made it the most valuable company of all time, and worth more than the gross domestic product of all but 16 countries.
