By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
Walmart revealed it spent $11.8 billion the last year on dividends. Amazon doesn’t have such a strategy but AMZN stock price is growing.
Amazon (AMZN) stock is in green these days while Walmart (WMT) stock is falling. Do these events have any relation to the companies’ performance and approaches? Let’s have a look at how both companies are doing.
John Furner, President and CEO of Walmart US, said recently that the role of corporations has changed. By saying that, Furner was thinking of making better opportunities for employment. He thought of making a difference in the environment and adding value to the customer. Amazon came to the center of interest as the need for retail sustainability grew. Also, companies were being held responsible for consumers who seek more sustainable products and practices.
Jeff Bezos claimed recently his dedication of $10 billion to fight climate change with his Bezos Earth Fund. This inventiveness was meant to help support scientists, activists, non-governmental organizations and everybody who try to help preserve and protect the natural world and save the earth.
‘Amazon Effect’: More Eco-Friendly
Bezos has long deemphasized the influence of the “Amazon Effect” and the company’s one-day shipping on emissions and the habitat, saying that it’s more eco-friendly to have an item delivered than driving to the store.
Anne Goodchild, a University of Washington professor of civil and environmental engineering, said “as we move towards faster delivery, it gets harder to consolidate. When we’re not paying some sort of personal cost for the trip, I think it’s easy to overlook how much travel we’re adding.”
Be it as it may, the truth is that Amazon never paid a dividend. On the other hand, Walmart paid Wall Street investors $12 billion last year just to keep them happy. Amazon (AMZN) stock price is doing quite well in regards to the current U.S. economic state and analysts foresee the stock price hitting $5,000 in 2023.
Tops Estimates with EPS of $6.47 in Q4
Last month the company said its earnings per share in the fourth quarter of 2019 stood at $6.47, rising 7% compared to the same period a year earlier and topping market estimates. Net income in the three-month period climbed 10% to $3.3. billion and revenues soared 21% to $87.4 billion.
For full fiscal 2019, the e-commerce giant’s revenue rose jumped 20% to $280.5 billion and net income increased 15% to $11.6 billion, or $23.1 per diluted share.
“Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding — more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world,” CEO Jeff Bezos stated. “Prime members watched double the hours of original movies and TV shows on Prime Video this quarter compared to last year, and Amazon. Originals received a record 88 nominations and 26 wins at major awards shows,” he added.
Amazon Suing Microsoft for JEDI Contract
Also let’s not forget that the judge ordered last week that the JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure) cloud contract between Microsoft and Pentagon, becomes temporarily blocked. Amazon has filed a suit regarding the fact that in October last year, Microsoft was awarded the contract, saying that United States President Donald Trump had a great influence on the decision.
The court granted a motion filed by Amazon’s cloud-computing arm, Amazon Web Services which has been asking for Microsoft’s work on JEDI contract to be paused claiming the evaluation process included “clear deficiencies, errors and unmistakable bias.”
AWS previously said the main “question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD [Department of Defense] to pursue his own personal and political ends.”
Let’s also have a look at the current stock prices. At the time of writing Amazon (AMZN) stock was up 1.11% and is trading at $2179.70 while Walmart (WMT) decreased by 1.34% and is trading at $118.03.