One of the year’s biggest shopping events has arrived…
After capturing enormous profits by pushing its Prime delivery service, e-commerce leviathan Amazon began Prime Day in 2015. And every year since then, it’s racked up tremendous sales in its very own Black Friday style extravaganza.
Last year’s Prime Day raked in around $3.9 billion in sales.
This year, for the first time, Prime Day is two days long, and Amazon hopes to recover $5.8 billion.
For any other company, those figures would dwarf the entire market cap — but Amazon’s market cap is approaching a trillion dollars. That’s huge … and being able to create a whole new deal season out of your own customer base is some wild alchemy that could potentially boost profits.
Trouble on the Horizon
Despite the burgeoning popularity of the Jeff Bezos empire, there are rumblings of emerging problems: for years now, advocates have been looking into working conditions in Amazon warehouses. Now, some Amazon teams are striking strategically during the big sale to bring attention to the demands of labor. That’s in addition to widespread outside criticism of Amazon policies.
Then there’s also the threat of possible antitrust activity: By accomplishing its dominating market share, Amazon has gotten the attention of the FTC, and some regulatory investigation.
Still, if you look at Amazon’s equity movement, you see that AMZN spiked at least 5% in the month after Prime Day last year, and that now, the equity is already near all-time highs. If we can extrapolate from past Prime Days, the injection of cash could potentially raise stock value.
What’s on Sale?
This year’s Prime sale is heavy on electronics: Echo devices are on sale with discounts like 50% and there are also big deals on Apple Watches, Macbooks and other Apple gear (here’s a rundown) as well as Toshiba screens and more. Take a look at how this big market event impacts markets this month.
