Amazon (AMZN) Witnesses Biggest Cyber Monday Bonanza Ever

Americans were spoilt for choice on Cyber Monday 2017, with attractive offers on a wide array of products. The shopping extravaganza resulted in a number of companies registering robust sales but Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) seems to be the hero of the day.

On Wednesday, the e-Commerce giant announced that Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day worldwide in its history, surpassing Prime Day 2017 held in July.

According to Adobe Analytics, the company registered around $6.6 billion in sales, reflecting an increase of $1 billion from Cyber Monday 2016. In fact, the holiday season this time has started on an impressive note. Online sales during Thanksgiving and Black Friday touched all-time highs.

The news comes on the heels of the announcement made by the company that Echo Dot emerged the top-selling product on Amazon.com over the holiday weekend (period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday). Additionally, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, all-new Amazon Echo, and Fire 7 tablet also registered record sales, making the holiday weekend sales a great event in the company’s history.

However, Amazon has underperformed the industry it belongs to on a year-to-date basis. The company’s shares have gained only 54.8% compared with the industry’s growth of 64.3%.

Celebration Starts at Amazon

As usual, Amazon did not disclose the actual numbers. However, it did say that customers ordered “hundreds of millions” of products during the Thanksgiving Weekend through Cyber Monday, with 140 million items bought from small businesses.

This can be attributed to the increasing use of smartphones. These devices played a major role in giving a boost to Amazon’s Cyber Monday sales. The online retailer said that orders from the Amazon App on Cyber Monday increased more than 50% worldwide compared with last year.

According to data pulled from Adobe’s Digital Index data tool, revenues driven by smartphones also hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday, reaching $1.59 billion, up 39.2% from the year-ago quarter. Also, Adobe reported that on Black Friday, smartphones accounted for 44.6% of visits and 26% of revenues for online retailers.

Another big driver for a large number of shoppers could be the solid promotions and deep discounts offered by Amazon which may possibly have had encouraged sales. Echo Dot was among the few products that were heavily discounted. There were a number other attractive offers on Amazon devices, electronics, toys, home appliances and footwear.

It goes without saying that, while the holiday weekend was all about Cyber Monday, the day belonged to Amazon.

Zacks Rank

Amazon currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector are Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN) , PetMed Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:PETS) and SMART Global Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGH) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Long-term earnings per share growth rate for Groupon, PetMed Express and SMART Global is projected to be 10%, 10% and 15%, respectively.

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