4. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 273
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is a Bellevue-based technology firm that has diversified business to own significant stakes in the publishing and food industries. With the e-commerce business of the firm booming during the pandemic, Amazon has been quietly opening up smart food stores around the US. In 2017, the firm had purchased Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, forcing grocery and retail brands to pay attention to online parts of their business, and establishing itself as a major player in the market in the process.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock has been rallying in recent days as rumors about a possible stock split dominate the market. The firm has also been fighting controversies related to worker conditions and has announced that it will increase the salary of more than 500,000 US-based workers by $0.5 to $3.
At the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, 273 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $51 billion in the firm, up from 245 in the preceding quarter worth $43 billion.
Alger Spectra Fund, in their Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Jeffrey Bezos‘ Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN). Here is what Alger Spectra Fund has to say about Amazon.com, Inc. in their Q1 2021 investor letter:
“Long position Amazon.com, Inc. was among the top detractors from performance. Amazon continued to generate strong high unit volume growth by taking market share from brick and mortar retailing. In the recent quarter, retail sales surprised notably on the upside as coronavirus has accelerated the adoption of e-commerce. Some of these shoppers will remain loyal beyond the end of social distancing further pushing the permanent market share gain of e-commerce at the expense of brick and mortar. Amazon.com’s guidance includes a modest deceleration in the retail sales growth but at still strong levels in the upcoming quarter. The same accelerated trend in adoption was also seen at Amazon’s AWS as corporate America embraced cloud offerings in the new distributed workforce environment although profitability in this segment fell short of expectations due to Amazon.com investing ingrowth initiatives.
Despite the continuing gains in these large addressable markets, Amazon’s share price detracted from performance as investors wait to see how the significant 2020 growth comparisons generated during the economic shutdown affect Amazon’s reported growth rates in 2021. Meanwhile, value versus growth equity returns in recent months indicate that investors possibly prefer to chase the transitory performance associated with pure play beneficiaries of economic re-openings while eschewing the potential compounding benefits garnered from high-quality, long-duration innovation led growers like Amazon.”
