Amazon (AMZN) is set to announce its Q1 2021 on Thursday April 29, and while the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud operation is usually top of mind for investors and analysts, it’s the tech giant’s ecommerce business that could take center stage this time around.
According to Oppenheimer Senior Analyst Jason Helfstein, Amazon investors will be watching to see whether pandemic-driven consumer spending on online goods will drop as people have become more comfortable venturing back out into the world.
“We think the cloud story is well set up, and investors are probably not worried about that,” Helfstein told Yahoo Finance Live. “It’s probably more of, did Amazon take so much share during COVID and people buying shampoo online for the first time that as the economy is reopening, they’re going to lose share.”
Amazon became even more a go-to for consumers during the pandemic, as stay-at-home orders forced people to find new ways to get their shopping done. That translated to some huge wins, with the company reporting $125 billion in revenue in Q4 2020, the first time it topped the $100 billion revenue mark in a quarter.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos provides the keynote address at the Air Force Association's Annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Oxen Hill, MD, on September 19, 2018. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)