You may want to look out your window and see if pigs are flying because Amazon actually managed to turn a profit this quarter. To be fair, it was a measly $92 million compared to the company’s tens of billions in revenue, but considering that Amazon has been operating on a loss for so long that it has almost become a joke, this quarter is definitely a step in the right direction. Investors seem to agree, as the company’s shares went up 17% yesterday.
We have reached Peak Amazon, or perhaps Prime Amazon. The e-commerce company beloved by Wall Street for its fast-growing ways did something completely out of character in the second quarter: It made a profit. It was only $92 million, practically a rounding error for Google or Apple. But it confirmed all the hopes and expectations of analysts and investors, who immediately pushed Amazon shares up 17 percent in after-hours trading Thursday to $566. The surge added another $40 billion or so to Amazon’s market cap. That will almost assuredly propel it to be more valuable than Walmart for the first time when the stock market opens Friday, making this a deeply symbolic moment for e-commerce and the Internet. It is also a nice present for Amazon, which celebrated its 20th birthday last week. “Holy cow, what a quarter,” said Jason Moser, an analyst with the Motley Fool website and an Amazon investor. “They blew that thing out of the water.”
