AMZN - Amazon.com, Inc.
| Previous close | 2,460.60 |
| Open | 2,444.51 |
| Bid | 2,479.30 x 1000 |
| Ask | 2,482.00 x 1200 |
| Day's range | 2,437.13 - 2,488.65 |
| 52-week range | 1,626.03 - 2,525.45 |
| Volume | 3,306,445 |
| Avg. volume | 5,648,420 |
| Market cap | 1.238T |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | 1.51 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 110.02 |
| EPS (TTM) | 22.57 |
| Earnings date | 23 Jul 2020 - 27 Jul 2020 |
| Forward dividend & yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-dividend date | N/A |
| 1y target est | 2,675.96 |
- Motley Fool
Apple TV+ Could Still Reach 100 Million Subscribers
Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) foray into subscription video has been relatively quiet since it launched Apple TV+ in November. Despite offering a free year of service to anyone that buys a new Apple device and pricing the service at just $4.99 per month for everyone else, the tech titan hasn't grabbed the attention of most consumers. Various media reports put Apple TV+ viewers somewhere between 10 million and 33 million.
- Yahoo Finance
How protests spurred Corporate America into action on race, inequality
Outrage over George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers have pushed America to the brink, but have also spurred numerous big companies and brands into a new form of activism.
- Motley Fool
Consider This Before You Balk at Zoom Video's Sky-High Valuation
If you followed the goings-on at Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ: ZM) during the coronavirus crisis, it seemed that it was far from firing on all cylinders. The problem, according to detractors, is that the absurd rate of revenue growth is now more than priced in as Zoom's price-to-sales ratio (market cap divided by trailing-12-month revenue) is at a crazy 71.8.
- Motley Fool
You Can Buy Amazon Stock for $5 or Less -- Here's How
With the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting the median weekly earnings of full-time workers at $957 in the first quarter of 2020, the typical American would need to work more than two weeks just to get enough money to buy a single share. In fact, you can buy Amazon stock for $5 or less. You can do that thanks to fractional shares.
- Motley Fool
If You're Retired, Consider Buying These 7 Stocks
Combining dividends and growth may be a great way to extend the life of your portfolio in retirement.
- Motley Fool
How to Buy Stocks You Normally Can't Afford
Whether you're new to investing or trying to build a solid portfolio over time, you're probably aware that some stocks may be out of your reach. Take Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), for example, which was trading at $2,479.72 per share the morning of June 4. Thankfully, stocks like Amazon don't necessarily have to remain too expensive to buy.
- Bloomberg
WhatsApp Gets a Raw Deal in Payments
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Money is many things, but it’s not fake news. So why block WhatsApp from spreading it around?India is the laboratory of choice for Western tech firms to test out their mobile payment capabilities so they can be rolled out from Bangladesh to Nigeria. Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg entered the fray two years ago by enabling the popular messaging service WhatsApp to send and receive money in India. But the beta version, limited to 1 million users, keeps getting blocked from becoming a full-fledged service.Meanwhile, rivals such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google Pay, Walmart Inc.-owned PhonePe and Softbank Group Corp.-backed Paytm are dominating India’s mobile transfers landscape. The troika led with 75 million, 60 million and 30 million customers transacting last month, respectively, according to TechCrunch.While Facebook Inc. deserves scrutiny globally for providing a platform for hate speech, voter manipulation and dissemination of untruth, cashless transfers is one area where WhatsApp can be a force for good. That’s especially true in emerging economies like India. As the Covid-19 lockdown has underscored, hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers in urban centers lack both liquid savings and a state-provided safety net. Increasingly ubiquitous smartphones can bring vulnerable citizens the financial security that bank branches can’t supply. To restrain WhatsApp is a waste of the infrastructure India has built. Four years ago, the country set up a shared interface linking more than 150 participating banks. An account holder in any of them can send or receive money to anybody else on the network. The two parties don’t need to know anything more than each other’s mobile number or a virtual ID. From Google to Walmart, any app can tap the common protocol, which already supports transactions worth more than 10% of gross domestic product. Google is so impressed it wants the U.S. Federal Reserve to consider adopting the standard. WhatsApp needs a nod from the regulator, the National Payments Corporation of India, to throw open the switch. The first roadblock was the central bank’s requirement that payment data be stored only locally. That hurdle has been crossed, but the service remains restricted. In February, a little-known think tank filed a lawsuit, asking India’s Supreme Court to block payments on WhatsApp “since it’s known to have failed to secure sensitive data of its users.” In an affidavit this week, WhatsApp said that the petition by the “busybody” was not maintainable. Legal challenges in India can drag on endlessly.The popularity of the messaging app, which has more than 400 million Indian users, is its biggest strength and its worst enemy. Take pinBox, which wants to introduce digital micro-pensions to the masses across Asia and Africa. It’s waiting eagerly for WhatsApp payments. The combination of financial and digital illiteracy can be a showstopper; it’s much easier to promote a saving culture on a messaging app where people spend most of their waking hours, anyway. The familiarity with the medium cuts both ways. Recently, the service was used to accuse Muslims in India of deliberately transmitting Covid-19, triggering assaults on the minority community. But then, disinformation isn’t limited either to WhatsApp or India. TikTok, the most-downloaded app during the pandemic, had posts claiming that 5G technology helps spread the virus, fueling violence against telecommunications workers and equipment across the U.K. and Europe. In India, the user-video platform has raised hackles for enabling sharing of content that promotes acid attacks on women.While regulators should push Zuckerberg to keep making social media safer, for instance by restricting message forwarding, they need to be pragmatic when it comes to online payments. China is far ahead. But that market, in the pincer grasp of Alipay and WeChat Pay wallets, isn’t open to U.S. firms. Besides, the scope for replacing cash is bigger in India, where 14% of money supply is still currency in circulation, a figure that China has crunched to 4%. The size of the opportunity is why India is attracting attention.Facebook recently took a 10% stake in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms Ltd. for $5.7 billion. Jio’s 4G network is India’s biggest, with nearly 400 million customers. Ambani, Asia’s richest man, wants to connect a billion-plus buyers with neighborhood stores, combining physical and digital retail. Payments via WhatsApp will be a way to achieve that link, with brands giving discounts and financiers offering in-store credit based on Jio’s scoring model.Others will catch up. Amazon.com Inc. is planning to take a $2 billion stake in Bharti Airtel Ltd., Jio’s closest rival, Reuters has reported. According to the Financial Times, Google is exploring an investment in Vodafone Group Plc’s struggling India wireless business. (Vodafone Idea Ltd. said there’s no such proposal before its board.) The rising global interest in digitizing the billion-plus-people economy could be sustained, as it coincides with what may be a long-drawn tech cold war between China and the West. Although India has recognized privacy to be a fundamental right, giving grounds for legal challenges against tech firms, it has yet to enact a data protection law. That’s where the focus has to be, not on limiting competition. The central bank needs to strike a balance between safeguarding financial stability and encouraging innovation such as “account aggregators,” who compile and share financial data with the consent of users looking for loans or insurance. With most manufacturing and services in disarray, helping money go viral is India’s best chance to break out of the Covid gloom.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
‘Dear White People,’ ‘This Is America’ See Surge in Interest
(Bloomberg) -- The nationwide protests against police brutality and the killing of black people have sent Americans in search of movies, books and podcasts that deal with race.Demand for Netflix Inc.’s series “Dear White People” has surged 329%, research firm Parrot Analytics found. Interest in “When They See Us,” a 2019 series about the Central Park Five, has grown 147%, according to the firm, which gauges the popularity of shows based on social media, fan ratings and other measures.Childish Gambino’s “This Is America,” a 2018 song about race and violence in the U.S., reentered the top 50 on Spotify Technology SA’s service, which has promoted a hub for black history all week.Several books that discuss race relations in the U.S. have sold enough copies this week to be out of stock on Amazon.com Inc.’s site, including “How to Be an Antiracist,” Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns.” “Invisible Man,” a novel that explores what it meant to be black in the middle of the 20th century, was published in 1952.The killing of George Floyd while in police custody -- and the subsequent protests against racial injustice -- have brought introspection. In between debates about police reform, news outlets, activists and media companies have shared lists of edifying books and movies.The swell of interest has also extended to podcasts. Three series about race -- the New York Times’ “1619,” National Public Radio’s “Code Switch” and Crooked Media’s “Pod Save the People” -- rank among the five most popular shows on Apple Inc.’s podcast app.(A previous version of the story corrected the title in the second deck headline. Updates with more on protest coverage.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
3 big reasons retail brands die in America
Yahoo Finance looks at why once proud retail chains such as J.C. Penney have gone bankrupt.
- Motley Fool
Slack Partners With Amazon in a Bid to Gain on Microsoft Teams
In conjunction with its first-quarter financial results, business communication platform Slack (NYSE: WORK) this week announced a partnership with Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). As part of the multiyear deal, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will adopt Slack's channel-based messaging solution for its employees.
- Bloomberg
Musk Says Time to Break Up Amazon, Fueling Bezos Feud
(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said it’s “time to break up Amazon” in a tweet Thursday, escalating a rivalry with Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos, another billionaire investing in space exploration.“Monopolies are wrong,” Musk tweeted while tagging Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man. The online retailer is among tech companies being scrutinized by federal regulators and lawmakers for the increasing size and the scope of its business.Musk’s post came in response to a tweet from a writer who said his book titled “Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and The Lockdown” was being removed from Amazon’s Kindle publishing division for violating unspecified guidelines.An Amazon spokeswoman said the book was removed in error and is being reinstated. “We have notified the author,” she said in an email.Last year, a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. executive said Amazon’s effort to build a constellation of broadband internet satellites was years behind the closely held company. Musk founded SpaceX two years after Bezos started rival manufacturer Blue Origin.With more than 35 million followers, Musk is a prolific tweeter. He has been criticized in the past for his posts on various subjects ranging from the coronavirus outbreak to Tesla’s stock price.(Corrects timing of SpaceX and Blue Origin founding.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
Zoom in 'early stages' of security deal with Google: CFO
Zoom continues to focus greatly on improving the security of its platform amid a surge in new users.
- Motley Fool
A Soaring Stock Market Leaves Moderna, Slack Behind
The stock market posted a huge advance on Friday, lifted by an extremely optimistic outlook on the employment front. Most economists had expected dramatic job losses in May, but the employment report instead showed millions of new jobs created. For Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) and Slack Technologies (NYSE: WORK), shareholders seem to think that what's good for the broader economy might end up taking away from the long-term potential of their respective businesses.
- Zacks
AMD Powers AWS Instances With Second-Gen EPYC Processors
AMD's second-gen EPYC processors will help AWS deliver higher compute power and optimized performance to its customers.
- Zacks
Top Research Reports for Amazon, Bank of America & Lockheed Martin
Top Research Reports for Amazon, Bank of America & Lockheed Martin
- Motley Fool
Roku's in the Best Position to Win This $7 Billion Opportunity
Streaming hours are booming amid the coronavirus pandemic, and ad-supported streaming services are some of the biggest winners. Most connected-TV ads aren't bought directly through the media companies behind the various streaming services. Instead, they use a platform that aggregates inventory across multiple platforms or streaming services.
- Zacks
Amazon Shows Interest in Airtel, Eyes India Telecom Space
Amazon (AMZN) is in talks to acquire 5% in Bharti Airtel to foray into the booming India telecom market.
- Motley Fool
Like Other E-Commerce Companies Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic, eBay Is Seeing a Surge in Demand
Not surprisingly, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) is also seeing higher sales. On eBay's first-quarter earnings call in April, management had already observed an "initial surge" following stay-at-home orders implemented in March, with that momentum continuing throughout April. With the business continuing to perform better than eBay's expectations, the company is now increasing its outlook for numerous key metrics.
- TechCrunch
Slack's new integration deal with AWS could also be about tweaking Microsoft
Slack and Amazon announced a big integration late yesterday afternoon. As part of the deal, Slack will use Amazon Chime for its call feature, while reiterating its commitment to use AWS as its preferred cloud provider to run its infrastructure. At the same time, Amazon has agreed to offer Slack as an option for all internal communications.
- Motley Fool
Are Amazon and Walmart Ready to Face This Gigantic Challenge?
The looming threat of Reliance Retail's move into e-commerce business in India has been hanging over Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) for quite some time now. Led by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Retail has been gradually testing the waters of India's e-commerce space that is currently dominated by Amazon and Walmart subsidiary Flipkart.
- Motley Fool
Better Buy: Amazon vs. Home Depot
While many businesses have had to shut down as a result of COVID-19, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Home Depot (NYSE: HD) have had the opportunity to stay open. In the release from the most recent quarterly results, CEO Jeff Bezos said, "From online shopping to [Amazon Web Services] to Prime Video and Fire TV, the current crisis is demonstrating the adaptability and durability of Amazon's business as never before, but it's also the hardest time we've ever faced." The pandemic has pushed people to shift more of their shopping to Amazon, and some of these customers will stick around even after the health crisis has run its course.
- Bloomberg
Amazon’s Heavily Automated HR Leaves Workers in Sick-Leave Limbo
(Bloomberg) -- Tony Banks told Amazon.com Inc. right away when he tested positive for Covid-19. More than a month later, he’s on the mend, but struggling with fatigue and shortness of breath that makes most physical activity feel like he’s just sprinted up a hill. Banks says he’s in no shape to return to work at the Indiana warehouse where he walks miles every shift. Yet somewhere in an Amazon human-resources operation that already extended his medical leave once, Banks is seen as an employee abandoning his job. The company has twice in recent weeks initiated automatic termination proceedings against him for missing shifts. “I understand that it’s overwhelming right now,” Banks says. “But for all the resources they have, it’s almost like a mom-and-pop operation.”After suffering delivery delays and mass absenteeism during the early weeks of the pandemic, Amazon has hit another snag: a human resources department ill prepared to handle the thousands of requests pouring in from sick employees and those who need to stay home to care for their children or elderly relatives. It’s unclear how many employees are stuck in limbo, but Bloomberg spoke with six such workers, who work in facilities from New Jersey to Indiana. They say they’re owed back pay for time spent on sick leave or in quarantine, have been scheduled for shifts while sick, or were denied leave despite providing documentation of conditions Amazon says should make them eligible to stay home without pay.Many companies would struggle with this unprecedented emergency, made harder by the federal government’s largely ineffective response to a pandemic that has sickened more than 1.8 million people and killed more than 100,000. Meanwhile, state governments have grappled with an influx of unemployment claims.But the design of Amazon’s HR department reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s culture. It’s heavily automated, which helps Amazon grow quickly and restrain costs but these days leaves employees hitting dead ends with chatbots, smartphone apps and phone trees. Three people with experience in the company’s human resources group say the unit has been weighed down by competing priorities. HR is expected to offer workers the same speedy customer service as Amazon’s customers, while practicing a level of frugality that Amazon sometimes takes to extremes, the employees say. HR “is always struggling to automate and keep pace with the scale of the company,” says one of the people, who all requested anonymity because they signed confidentiality agreements. “The horror stories happen because [HR] people are overwhelmed. And they don’t have the resources and the mental capacity to deal with [workers] because they’re pulled in so many different directions. It’s bound to have negative, real-life human impacts.” Amazon says Banks, the employee threatened with termination, shouldn’t have received those notices and that they were sent after Banks failed to submit proof of his condition when applying to extend the leave. “These are unprecedented times, and we’re working fast to support our employees, partners and provide critical services to communities in need,” Lisa Levandowski, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in an email. “We’ve created 175,000 jobs across America, increased wages, adjusted time-off options, just to name a few, to support the hundreds of thousands of employees who work in our sites. Like all companies we’re rapidly adjusting to support our teams.”Amazon has added some 2,500 full-time and temporary staffers to the human-resources teams that support its logistics group since the beginning of the year, she said.The pandemic has created one of the biggest challenges in Amazon’s quarter-century history. While the company has benefited from a surge in online orders from home-bound shoppers, Covid-19 has sickened more than 1,100 employees and killed nine, according media reports and internal information gathered by workers. Amazon, which declines to disclose how many employees have caught the virus, has kept its operations running without widespread closures thanks in part to a hiring spree and new safety measures designed to adapt the company’s logistical prowess to public health guidelines.Behind the scenes, however, the hiring binge and health crisis have put enormous pressure on a human-resources operation that was already struggling to keep up with Amazon’s growth. The company in the last half-decade has added an average of 130,000 workers a year. Then, during a six-week period beginning in March, Amazon recruited a mind-boggling 175,000 people to help it keep up with surging orders and plug warehouse slots abandoned by workers too afraid to show up.Amazon has worked for years to minimize the human effort behind administrative work. It’s part of a company-wide mandate to deploy automation and advanced software, a bet that Amazon can invent the systems of the future and keep a lid on costs at the same time. Automatic processes are a necessity for an HR department that deals with many millions of employee inquiries a year. But those systems can be of little help to an overwhelmed staffer who needs time to sift through Amazon policies and government leave laws on behalf of an employee.For a time, Amazon outsourced some of the work—sending employees seeking family or medical leave to ReedGroup, a provider of outsourced leave management services. But issues cropped up, including missed return dates and employees coming back from leave to find their paychecks hadn’t resumed. (ReedGroup didn’t immediately provide comment.)Amazon began shifting the work back in-house late last year, completing the transfer on March 2, two weeks before the first Covid-19 case was confirmed among the company’s U.S. workers. Many employees stopped showing up or cut shifts short, moves Amazon supported with an offer of unlimited unpaid time off without risk of termination. Andre Goodin, who works in an Amazon warehouse outside Baltimore, fell ill in April and was ordered into quarantine while he waited for a Covid-19 test that ultimately proved to be negative. Back at work, he had a second scare. A colleague he works with closely tested positive, days after a team meal during which a small group ate pizza together. Goodin, told by on-site HR to wait for Amazon to contact him if they determined he was at risk of exposure, decided to quarantine anyway.Amazon says it has no record of Goodin coming into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. The company says it uses video footage to determine such exposure and defines contact for the purposes of its contact-tracing program, as more than 15 minutes of exposure within six feet of a person. By then, Amazon’s offer of unpaid time off had expired. The company said people suffering from Covid-19, those in quarantine and people who needed time to care for loved ones or shelter with at-risk family members, would be eligible for leave. But the deluge of requests overwhelmed Amazon’s ability to respond. Goodin, still trying to get the pay he believes he’s eligible for his first quarantine, isn’t optimistic about ever getting paid for his second. He has hit dead ends when trying to use Amazon’s self-service options and says he has spent hours on hold waiting to speak to representatives of Amazon’s Employee Resource Center. “It went from being able to call and talk to a person, to now, they automatically redirect you to the website and hang up on you,” he says. Goodin and other hourly warehouse employees typically use a smartphone app for most workplace issues. They can also ask for help from on-site human resources teams. For many tasks more complicated than requesting time off or fixing a missed time card punch, though, they must open a case with centralized HR teams in the U.S., Costa Rica and India. Staff at an employee call center in San Jose, Costa Rica, were used to the occasional call from frustrated employees worried that delayed responses from HR would mean termination or a missed paycheck, according to someone familiar with the operation. Amazon was already struggling to manage call volume as it took back management of leave services from ReedGroup, the person said. Then the virus struck, and the phones began ringing incessantly. “Obviously, no one saw that this was going to happen,” the person says. “Amazon was, and is still not ready for the volume of cases they have.” For some employees, being left in limbo has made them reconsider their choice of employer. One worker at a warehouse on the East Coast, who toiled on weekends to help Amazon deal with the surge in orders, sometimes putting in 20 hours of overtime a week, was burned out. In April, she asked for unpaid leave to catch her breath. She made sure to put in the request early, giving Amazon almost three weeks to respond. Human resources never did. “I’ve been their biggest supporter,” she says of Amazon. “I went from feeling 100% on them, to, I’m at zero. It’s like we’re replaceable.”Another employee, who recovered from a case of Covid-19 caught early in the pandemic and had her illness confirmed by an antibody test, asked HR to compensate her for that sick time. The company misinterpreted the request, she says, and put her on unpaid leave, a sequence of events Amazon says its system shouldn’t allow. After days of trying to contact someone to fix it, and hours spent on hold, the worker says she was patched through to a call center employee in India, who couldn’t help her. “They only opened a ticket,” she says. “The department I needed doesn’t work weekends.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Motley Fool
Got $3,000? Buy These 5 Stocks for the New Bull Market
In fact, discussion on Wall Street has shifted from wondering whether we'd retest the lows set on March 23 to what stocks should be bought in the brand-new bull market. Arguably one of the most exciting trends for the new bull market (and beyond) is cybersecurity.
- Financial Times
Amazon/Elon Musk: monopoly money
Witness the latest bout of mud-slinging directed at Amazon’s Jeff Bezos by Tesla motormouth Elon Musk. Breaking down Amazon into six constituent parts, and relying on 2023 profit estimates, Jefferies certainly thinks so. While best known as the go-to place to procure everything from cat toys to ramen noodles, Amazon’s crown jewel is its Amazon Web Services cloud computing business.
- FX Empire
Dow Closes Higher; Late Tech Sell-Off Weighs on S&P, NASDAQ
Shares of ZoomInfo (ZI) surged more than 70% on its market debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday, the first technology IPO since the global pandemic.
