Amazon shares will rally to $3,000 in about two years, making them worth nearly $1.5 trillion, without the company doing much differently than it is doing today, Piper Jaffray told clients on Friday. “We believe AMZN shares will reach $3,000 by sometime between mid-’21 and mid-’22 or within 24-36 months,” analyst Michael Olson said in a note. 

Amazon.com Inc. taking a $575 million investment in Deliveroo, buying into the startup and pitting it directly against Uber Technologies Inc. the European food delivery industry. The London-based startup, which has raised $1.53 billion to date, will use the cash to expand its technology team and network and compete against Just Eat Plc and Uber. Amazon will be joined in the Series G funding round by existing backers T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Research Co. and Greenoaks, Deliveroo said in an emailed statement. Deliveroo said the new funding will partly go towards new innovations in the food sector.

Amazon is leading a $575 million funding round for Deliveroo, taking the total the food delivery app has raised to date up to $1.53 billion.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba clocked an impressive fourth quarter, despite the ongoing US-Sino trade war, with revenue rising 51% to $13.9 billion beating estimate of $13.3 billion.The number of active customers reached 654 million, rising 18 million from the previous quarter and 102 million from the same period a year ago.  The main driver for this growth was e-commerce businesses made up of Taobao marketplace and Tmall.

Farfetch shares lost more than -10% Thursday, after the online luxury fashion retailer reported wider-than-expected loss for the first-quarter.  The company incurred an adjusted loss of -22 cents per share, worse than analysts’ anticipated -14 cents per share loss. However, revenue of $174.1 million came in higher than analysts’ estimates of $171.1 million.The figure also marked a +39% climb year-over-year . CEO Jose Neves mentioned launch of the Augmented Retail pilot in Chanel's new Paris boutique, and the entry of Farfetch on JD.com's platform as significant developments for the company in recent times. Despite the lower-than-expected earnings performance of Farfetch in the latest quarter reported, several investment bank analysts did not budge from their outlook.

The company hasn’t yet disclosed the cost of this delivery push. The move is to compete with e-commerce rival Amazon, who has recently invested $800 million during the second quarter for one-day delivery service to Amazon Prime customers.However, the service is available for only Prime customers who already pay $119 annually for their membership. But Walmart has at least one advantage over Amazon - it has a network of thousands of stores across the country functioning as fulfilling centers.

On top of this, the company said that it will pay these employees the three-month equivalent of their current salary if their start-ups benefit Amazon. This is in-line with Amazon’s ‘Pay to Quit’ program announced in a shareholder letter five years ago.For example, in June 2018, the company launched its ‘Delivery Service Partners’ initiative which pursues independent business owners put up Amazon stickers on their vans even if they are working for other companies like FedEx (FDX) or UPS (UPS). Since its establishment, the initiative has been able to help create 200 odd small businesses that have hired many local drivers to deliver packages to Amazon customers.

Whole Foods still has the highest overall prices among U.S. food retailers, despite the widely publicized discounts the Amazon-owned grocer made in April.

President Donald Trump dramatically increased pressure on China to reach a trade deal on Sunday, saying he would hike U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods this week and target hundreds of billions more soon. Read More...

Shares of the online furniture retailer, Wayfair, fell as much as 12% on Thursday over high costs and widening losses, even though the company clocked double-digit growth in revenue for the first quarter of 2019. Revenue rose 39% to $1.94 billion in Q1 versus an estimated $1.92 billion.However, losses widened to $200.4 million, that is, $2.20 per share, from $107.8 million, or $1.22 a share, during the same period a year ago.

Fast-growing companies sometimes discover that what they once thought was an ancillary part of their business suddenly has more potential than their primary focus area.With Latin American e-commerce provider MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI), the company's marketplace platform was initially the focal point for growth, but recently, its payment network has been the biggest driver of growth for the company -- paralleling the experience that one of its closest counterparts in the U.S. experienced with its own related payment service. Read More...

Amazon has been testing a new online service that matches truck drivers with shippers since last year, taking its first step into the lucrative online freight brokerage space, according to two people familiar with the service.READ MORE...

On an adjusted basis, the y-o-y growth of this ‘Other’ segment in Q4 2018 stood at 38%, while the same ranged between 51% and 73% in previous quarters last year. Amazon initially saw good success in its advertising segment and became a major contender to Google and Facebook.But that has faded this year and advertisers are saying that they are now focussing on building strategies and weighing how well Amazon fits into them. On the other hand, Google (GOOGL) has been dominating the digital advertising ecosystem and has optimized its features, providing high returns for investors.

Amazon’s revenue numbers will likely show the slowest growth in four years when the company reports first-quarter results after the bell on Thursday, but investors will see more profitability in exchange.READ MORE...

E-commerce giant Amazon and French retailer Casino are strengthening their ties by opening lockers in more than 1,000 Casino stores including Monoprix, Monop, Geant, Hyper Casino, Casino Supermarche, Leaderprice, Viva and Spar and more of the French retailer’s products to be available on Amazon. This move was anticipated following Amazon’s purchase of brick-and-mortar American food retailer Whole Foods last year. The partnership comes at a time when Casino is looking at selling assets and cutting debt to address investors’ concerns over its finances. As part of the deal, Amazon and Monoprix will also extend their partnership on Amazon’s Prime Now grocery delivery service outside Paris and into new cities by the end of this year. This partnership has been closely watched as Monoprix was the first French retailer to agree to sell products via Amazon. Amazon had long term plans to launch services in French supermarket which is currently dominated by Carrefour and Leclerc, operating a

eBay shares jumped more than +6% during after-hours trading Tuesday, after the company reported higher-than-expected earnings for its first quarter. The e-commerce behemoth’s adjusted earnings of $0.67 per share exceeded analysts’ expectations of $0.63.Revenue of $2.6 billion came in higher than analysts’ estimates of $2.58 billion. For the full-year 2019, the company forecasts that its adjusted earnings would range between $1.94 and $2.04 per share.

Defense Department spokeswoman Elissa Smith on Thursday announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are the only two companies that meet the minimum requirements for the U.S. Defense Department’s contract for cloud computing services,after IBM and Oracle have been ruled out. The deal, known as JEDI, will be awarded to one of the two companies in July 2019. U.S Defense Department eliminated IBM and Oracle from its cloud computing services contract that could be worth as much as $10 billion in the next 10 years.This is a major loss for IBM and Oracle as it would have helped them overtake Amazon and Microsoft in the public cloud market. However, the deal is only one element in the DOD’s overall mission to modernize information technology as the deal demands multiple clouds from multiple vendors. The Pentagon has allocated $61.9 million for JEDI in the budget for the 2020 fiscal year.

Revenue of $3.31 billion fell slightly short of analysts’ expectations of $3.33 billion. Same-store sales declined -1.4% in the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of a decline around -1.3%. For the full fiscal year, the company incurred a loss of -$137.2 million, which is its first ever annual loss.Revenue fell -2.6% for the year. Looking ahead, Bed Bath & Beyond forecasts that its fiscal 2019 earnings would range between $2.11 and $2.20 a share, excluding certain charges.

The winner will be announced as soon as July 2019, the New York Times said. Amazon’s cloud business, called Amazon Web Services (AWS), seems to be emerging as  a major growth driver for the company.Revenue from the unit exceeded $7.4 billion in the fourth quarter. Microsoft, on the other hand, does not disclose figures separately for its Azure cloud segment; but Morgan Stanley analysts led by Keith Weiss estimated that Azure generated more than $3 billion in revenue for Microsoft in the fourth quarter as mentioned in the analysts’ note to clients earlier this month. The Defense Department hasn't released any statement regarding the matter on its website as yet.

Amazon’s plan to launch thousands of internet satellites to connect billions of people around the world represents a serious and underappreciated entrant in the space business, multiple analysts and industry executives told CNBC. Read More...