Amazon shares have officially closed at four digits.
The tech giant saw its stock stay above $1,000 per share for the first time since it went public in 1997, as AMZN closed at $1,006.73 on Friday afternoon.
Technically, the stock topped $1,000 per share early Tuesday morning, but it closed over $1,000 for the first time on Friday.
Amazon’s market capitalization is now around $486 billion. It’s the fourth-largest company — including both tech and non-tech — by market value, trailing Microsoft ($560 billion), Google/Alphabet ($688 billion), and Apple ($822 billion). Alphabet is also closing in on the $1,000 per share mark; it ended Friday at $975.60.
For retail industry context, Amazon is now worth more than double of Walmart, which is valued at $240 billion.
Most of Amazon’s gains have come in the last two years. It took Amazon 18 years as a public company to reach $500 per share, and just another 22 months to come close to $1,000. In 2017 alone, Amazon stock is up nearly 40 percent.
In its most recent quarter, Amazon posted sales of $35.7 billion, up 23 percent over last year, and reported profit of $724 million.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was asked by a shareholder last week whether the company would consider a stock split to make its shares more affordable. His answer: not right now.
“That’s something we consider from time to time,” Bezos said at Amazon’s annual meeting. “We don’t have any plans to do that at this point, but we will keep looking at it.”
Amazon split its stock three times in a 15-month window, about a year after it went public in 1997, and hasn’t done so since.
Bezos, meanwhile, is closing in on another milestone: Becoming the world’s richest person.
If Amazon’s shares continue rising, he will soon eclipse the net worth of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, as The Guardian noted. Bezos, who owns around 17 percent of Amazon, is worth $86 billion, while Gates is at $90 billion, according to Bloomberg. Bezos has seen his net worth grow by $20 billion in the past year alone.
While Amazon’s stock price has continued rising, some aren’t so sure about the company’s future success. Pacific Crest Securities analyzed Amazon’s latest earnings in a report called “As Good As It Gets (For Now),” and found that increased competition in online retail and cloud computing could blunt Amazon’s momentum in both areas.
While $1,000 per share is a lot, there are plenty of stocks trading at much higher prices. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, for example, trades at close to $250,000 per share. And there are examples in tech as well, such as travel site Priceline.com, which crossed the $1,000 per share threshold back in 2013, and sits at close to $1,900 today.
