Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock keeps benefitting as the company continues to branch out into new and exciting areas even as the company improves its core e-commerce business. Heading into 2024, Amazon increasingly looks like the stock to own for the year ahead.
A company that continues to expand at breakneck speed and has a successful stake in every important sector of the economy, from streaming and grocery delivery to artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Amazon is even broadcasting NFL football games. As we enter a new year, AMZN stock looks sure to continue the outperformance it enjoyed in 2023 when its share price rose 74%, and it could reach new heights.
AMZN Stock Post-Pandemic
Getting to this point hasn’t been easy. Amazon came out of the Covid-19 pandemic with a bunch of problems it had to resolve. The company was bloated, over-staffed and spending too much money as consumers suddenly moved offline and returned to in-person shopping.
To recover, Amazon cut more than 25,000 jobs, canceled several high-profile projects, and even temporarily halted construction on a new second headquarters it was building in Arlington, Virginia.
The decisive moves, while painful, have enabled Amazon to move past the pandemic and get its business back on track. This was clear in the company’s third-quarter financial results.
At the end of October, Amazon reported stellar earnings that showed accelerating growth across the company. Specifically, Amazon reported earnings per share of 94 cents versus 58 cents that had been expected
On Wall Street, revenue totaled $143.1 billion compared to $141.4 billion that was anticipated, and were up 13% from a year earlier driven largely by growing e-commerce sales.
Digital advertising revenue increased 26% in Q3 from a year earlier, while the Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit saw year-over-year growth of 12%. Looking ahead, Amazon executives forecast fourth-quarter sales of $167 billion, ahead of analyst estimates.
New Innovations and AMZN Stock
Key to Amazon’s success is the company’s constant innovation and diversification. Amazon is paying $1 billion per year to stream NFL games, primarily “Thursday Night Football” match-ups. However, the company also shelled out a reported $100 million to air the NFL’s first ever game on Black Friday this year. The move into live sports is helping to drive Amazon Prime subscriptions.
Another example of Amazon’s innovation can be found in the company’s new grocery subscription service, which is also exclusive to Prime members.
Amazon is now running a trial where existing Prime members are being given the option to pay an additional $9.99 per month to get unlimited grocery deliveries from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh on orders of more than $35. The new service is being trialed in the markets of Denver, Colorado; Sacramento, California; and Columbus, Ohio.
Amazon is betting that Prime members will want to pay an additional monthly charge for fresh food to be dropped at their residence without delivery fees. The company has become a major player in the grocery industry since it acquired Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion.
Over the last five years, Amazon has launched its own chain of Fresh supermarkets, and it has united its online and brick-and-mortar grocery operations.
If all this weren’t enough, Amazon also recently announced that, starting in 2024, consumers will be able to buy cars, trucks, and SUVs on its e-commerce platform, a move that’s expected to be a major revenue driver for the company.
Push into Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has been the hot trend in the tech sector and the hot trade in the stock market. Amazon is not missing out. While AI is not yet core to its business, Amazon is pushing into the space in significant ways.
At the end of November, the company revealed an AI chatbot for businesses called “Q.” Named after the character in the James Bond movies who provides the spy with his gadgets, Q helps people understand Amazon’s cloud-computing service and can make changes to source code, among other functions.
Amazon is also spending heavily to develop a new AI model codenamed “Olympus” that reportedly has two trillion parameters, double the power of OpenAI’s GPT-4 chatbot.
A team of engineers and programmers that previously worked on Amazon’s smart home device “Alexa” have been reassigned to Olympus as the company ramps up its investments in AI. Amazon has also partnered with AI start-ups Anthropic and AI21 Labs, offering them to its Amazon Web Service cloud customers.
Buy AMZN Stock
There’s so much going on at Amazon that it’s hard to capture it all. The company has regained its footing after the Covid-19 pandemic and is succeeding in several diverse and exciting areas beyond its core e-commerce offering.
With a growing focus on AI and constant innovations, Amazon looks poised to remain a leading mega-cap technology concern into 2024 and beyond. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase recently named Amazon one of their top picks for 2024. We concur. AMZN stock is a buy.
On the date of publication, Joel Baglole did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
