Amazon briefly surpassed a $1 trillion valuation after reporting blowout earnings for its fourth quarter on Thursday.
Amazon stock shot up more than 9% in early trading Friday, propelling its market cap to hit $1.02 trillion at the open and causing the stock to hit a new all-time intra-day high of $2,055.72. Amazon’s stock needed a price of $2,008.80 to reach the $1 trillion mark at the start of trading, based on an outstanding count of 497,810,444 shares in the company’s latest 10-K filing.
By Friday’s close, the stock was unable to hold onto those gains, with Amazon’s market value settling below $1 trillion. Shares of Amazon ended the day down 7.3% to $2,008.72 and a market value of $995.9 billion.
The company saw its market cap gain almost $96 billion from Thursday’s close, which is bigger than the market value of UPS and 3M. In order for Amazon’s market cap to rise $100 billion on Friday, the stock will need climb above $2,063.99.
By mid-morning on Friday, nearly $16 billion worth of Amazon stock had changed hands, which is about triple the average volume for the stock. In comparison, Apple saw $17.6 billion of its stock change hands during the entire session on Wednesday, the day after its fiscal first quarter earnings report.
In crossing the threshold, Amazon joins Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft, all of which have hit the key milestone. Amazon reached a $1 trillion market cap for the first time in September 2018. However, it surpassed the $1 trillion threshold intraday and wasn’t able to hold onto those gains after the market close.
Amazon’s fourth-quarter results proved its investments in one-day shipping are paying off, as it pushed consumers to purchase more products during the holiday shopping season. The company posted fourth-quarter earnings of $6.47 per share, which crushed estimates of $4.03 per share.
Amazon also gave upbeat guidance for the first quarter and provided updated figures on Prime subscribers, saying it now counts more than 150 million paying members in the program.
