Amazon jumps 16%, eclipsing Walmart as world's largest retailer

Amazon jumped 16% in after-market trade this morning bringing the capitalisation of the company to US$262b, knocking off Walmart (US235b) as the world's largest retailer by market value. When the stock opens tomorrow, AMZN will be up around 80% for the year. The most important number was revenue, up 20% to $23.2b or US$800m more than expected. Walmart appears to be larger in sales, but probably isn't as Amazon only books its share of the revenue on third party sales, rather than the gross amount. The serious money has been watching Amazon for some time, especially following the success of its cloud business earlier this year, but there has been carping about Amazon's failure to make a profit at the net line. This is shortsighted. Amazon expenses much that it could capitalise which has the effect of artificially lowering earnings. For the record the company did report a profit of 19c a share, when a loss 14c loss was expected. MEANWHILE Read chapter one of "Retirement, Investment and Blue Chips - what you really must know" at (VIEW LINK)