Amazon set to hit Bezos’s $200bn target
INTERNET shopping titan Amazon looks on course to break its $200bn annual turnover target as food and clothes sales soar.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s firm is this week expected to reveal annual sales of $175bn (£123bn) – roughly £330m each day.
The 54-year-old self-made tycoon is poised to hit the $200bn sales target he set out to employees a little more than a decade ago, within a few years.
Figures due this week are expected to show Amazon and fellow US tech titans continuing their global dominance following bumper Christmas sales. It comes in stark contrast to shoddy results for bricks-and-mortar retailers, and despite mounting worries over their influence and tactics.
Computer maker Apple looks set to become the world’s first trillion-dollar listed company thanks to booming Christmas sales of its iPhone X.
Amazon has been roaring ahead after branching out of books, snapping up pricey grocery chain Whole Foods last year for £10.4bn to help it deliver groceries to shoppers’ doorsteps, and launching its own clothing brands including Lark & Ro and Franklin & Freeman. Nike has also started selling shoes on its site.
Sales of its computerised personal assistant Alexa, meanwhile, have also rocketed, with customers growing five-fold during 2017.
Amazon sold £33bn of goods during the three months to the end of September 2017 – roughly £360m each day – and made a £194m profit. Shares have rocketed by nearly 70pc over the past year to a record $1,402 each, with Bezos becoming the world’s richest man in September last year.
Analysts are predicting a 37pc leap in quarterly sales to £42bn – or roughly £460m per day – when it reports results on Thursday.
Amazon will be competing for attention with results from rival US tech giants Facebook, due on Wednesday, and Apple and Google on Thursday. Traders are keen to see whether they can repeat Netflix’s success last week.
The streaming giant’s stock market value rose above $100bn for the first time after it announced 24m new members had joined during 2017.
In a sign of their growing dominance, shares in Silicon Valley firms have helped propel the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite to record highs during the past year. Despite concern that user satisfaction is falling, Facebook is expected to report a 42pc rise in quarterly revenue to £8.8bn.
The social media site and search engine Google are thought to have attracted 84pc of global spending on digital advertising last year.
Google’s parent Alphabet is expected to report sales of £22.4bn for the quarter, up 22.5pc.
Meanwhile, sales of the iPhone X are expected to have helped Apple rake in £61bn during the three months to the end of December or roughly £677m per day. Analysts expect it will make around £13.4bn in profit, driven by sales of its tablets, phones and laptops.
Despite bumper profits, tech bosses are under growing fire for the way they use people’s data and how much tax they pay.