Tuesday is the official Prime Day, but Monday we may have gotten a glimpse of Amazon stock on Prime Day, given that the company has extended its annual shopping festival from 24 hours to 30. This year’s Prime Day begins Monday evening, but ahead of closing bell, Amazon stock flirted with $1,000 a share. The last time Amazon stock was above $1,000 a share was last month.
Amazon stock on Prime Day
Prime Day kicks off at 9 Eastern Monday night and lasts through 3 a.m. Eastern Wednesday morning. This is the third year of Amazon’s annual shopping festival. It’s essentially Black Friday on steroids, although only those who subscribe to Amazon Prime are eligible for the deals. The online retailer has been offering warm-up deals since earlier this month.
Analysts and investors alike will be carefully watching Amazon stock on Prime Day. JPMorgan analysts said they expect the online retailer to rake in $30 billion in sales during the 30-day shopping event. That’s a 55% increase over last year’s Prime Day. Of note, in addition to today’s event being longer than last year’s (30 instead of 24 hours), Amazon added deals in Mexico, China and India to expand the parts of the world that is included.
Also this year, Amazon is including voice deals for those who use Alexa, its artificial assistant, to shop. Prime Day is also an excellent day for those looking for tech deals.
Amazon could rack up $1 billion in sales in hours
According to JPMorgan, Amazon also uses Prime Day to gauge demand for the second half of the year and test its own logistics and infrastructure to make sure it will be able to handle the holiday shopping rush later this year. Prime Day also offers an incentive for third-party sellers to participate in the Prime program and for shoppers to subscribe to Prime.
The online retailer offers a free 30-day trial for Prime, so many shoppers sign up for it just to be eligible for the deals. JPMorgan estimates that more than 70 million shoppers worldwide subscribe to Prime, with about 35 million to 40 million of those subscribers being in the U.S.
They also point out that in 2015, hundreds of thousands of people signed up for free trials of Prime, which was more than on any other day in history. However, Amazon didn’t report how many shoppers signed up for free trials last year. They expect many of those who sign up for a free trial to convert to a paying subscription at the end of the free trial. Amazon thrives on the loyalty it builds by convincing people to sign up for Prime.
Amazon closed up 1.81% at $996.47 today, so it seems we can expect strong gains in Amazon stock on Prime Day.
