Amazon Escapes Bloody Friday With 7% Gain as U.S. Declares National Health Emergency

• Amazon’s stock price zips past $2,000 on Friday, gaining as much as 9.9%.
• The e-commerce giant reported much better than expected results for its holiday quarter, with sales and earnings crushing estimates.
• As Amazon shares surged, the technology sector and broader U.S. stock market plunged.

Shares of Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) surged on Friday after the e-commerce giant’s quarterly earnings report blew past expectations – a sign that its investment in faster delivery times was already paying off.

Amazon Stock Blows Past $2,000

After gaining over 12.5% in after-hours trading on Thursday, Amazon’s stock price opened sharply higher Friday morning. AMZN peaked at $2,055.72 a share, up 9.9% from the previous day’s close. At its current pace, the stock is on track to set new all-time highs.

The stock would eventually settle at 2,008.72, having gained 7.4%.

The intraday rally pushed Amazon’s market capitalization back above $1 trillion, putting it in elite company alongside Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) [VentureBeat].

By the end of trading, Amazon’s market cap stood at $996.92 billion.

Amazon was one of the only bright spots in the U.S. stock market on Friday. The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 1.6%. The large-cap S&P 500 Index was off 1.8%%, with losses spread out among ten sectors. Energy companies were the hardest hit, falling 3.2% on average.

U.S. equities crashed over fears of a worsening coronavirus outbreak. As Yahoo Finance reports, U.S. authorities have declared a national health emergency with Delta, American and United halting all flights to China.

Stellar Earnings Report

The catalyst for Amazon’s record breakout was a much better than expected earnings report on Thursday. The Seattle-based company generated $6.47 in per-share earnings on revenue of $87.44 billion for the quarter ended December. Analysts in a median forecast were calling for an EPS of $4.04 on revenue of $86.02 billion.

A deep dive into the numbers revealed another stellar quarter for Amazon Web Services (AWS), the flagship cloud offering. AWS generated $9.95 billion in revenue for the quarter, well above forecasts of $9.81 billion.

Amazon owns nearly half of the public cloud infrastructure market, according to Forbes, and is the de facto leader in the rapidly growing industry.

Amazon’s investment in one-day shipping also appears to be paying off, especially during the holidays when demand for faster delivery times is greatest. Amazon Prime – the program that offers one-day shipping – now has 150 million subscribers.

Beyond the obvious growth drivers, Amazon appears keen on growing its advertising business at a time when companies like Facebook are under the political microscope. As MarketWatch reports, sales in Amazon’s “other” category, which includes advertising, grew 41% year-over-year.

Disclaimer: The above should not be considered trading advice from CCN.com.