The main event on the earnings calendar right now is Amazon‘s report, due out after the bell on Thursday. I’m watching several key components of its report.
The revelation that the company now has 100 million Amazon Prime members globally was a huge boost for the stock last week, but traders will now want to know how Amazon Web Services is performing.
The platform is indeed the dominant cloud provider; the critical question for investors to consider will be whether it has enough pricing power to absorb the increase in labor costs related to addressing security flaw vulnerabilities.
It was reported earlier this month that Netflix was testing the waters in moving to the Google cloud from AWS. This could certainly be a factor to consider if AWS growth slows.
Additionally, any comments related to possible repricing of its contract with the U.S. Postal Service could also rattle the market.
At this point, as Amazon’s stock is up 60 percent in the last year and trading above $1,450 per share, it’s certainly priced for perfection. Any small miss would no doubt cause a fast, furious sell-off.
But I’m of the belief that Amazon is the blue chip of the 21st century, as close to a Warren Buffett “moat” as we are likely to get, so any sharp dip would be a buying opportunity.
