Amazon stock price tops $2,000 for first time, inches closer to $1 trillion market value

The share price of Amazon, the online retail giant and one of Wall Street’s most popular and best-performing stocks, topped $2,000 for the first time Thursday, putting it within striking distance of joining Apple as the only U.S. companies with a market value of $1 trillion.

This month, Apple became the first U.S. publicly traded company in history to crack the $1 trillion market value barrier.

The Amazon juggernaut, led by CEO Jeff Bezos, not only is the undisputed king of the online retail industry, with roughly 50 percent of the total market, according to eMarketer, it also is a lead player in the fast-growing public cloud computing business, via its Amazon Web Services unit.

Amazon is also pushing into new businesses, such as groceries, a move highlighted by its purchase last year of upscale grocer Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. It also entered the health care space in June with the purchase of online pharmacy PillPack.

Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak cited Amazon’s „improving business mix” as a key reason why he sees Amazon „growing rapidly” and why he upped his price target for the stock to $2,500 a share this week.

Amazon shares closed at $2,002.22 on Thursday, extending its year-to-date gain to 71 percent.

Peter Cohan, a lecturer of strategy at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, says the stock can hit $4,000 by next summer.

„Bezos is the world’s best CEO,” Cohan says, adding that the company’s shares can keep rising „as long as it keeps growing faster than investors expect.”

Amazon makes lots of money – and its earnings are expected to keep growing at a fast clip. In the quarter that ended in June, Amazon reported sales of $52.9 billion and a profit of $2.5 billion. The company told Wall Street it expected third-quarter net sales of $54 billion to $57.5 billion, which equates to year-over-year growth of 23 to 31 percent.

Amazon’s stock has been one of the top performers in the bull market that began in March 2009, gaining more than 3,000 percent, data from S&P Dow Jones Indices show.

Amazon’s close above $2,000 Thursday makes it the only stock in the S&P 500 to have a share price that high, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Amazon is one of the so-called FAANG stocks – Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet are the others – a group of innovative tech giants that dominate their businesses and rake in billions in profits each quarter.

The average price target among Wall Street analysts for Amazon is now $2,141.50 per share, about 7 percent over Thursday’s close.

The days of Amazon just grabbing market share and not worrying about making a profit are over, says David Russell, vice president of content strategy at TradeStation, a digital trading platform.

„Amazon went from being viewed as a growth story to a profit story,” Russell told USA TODAY. „That’s the reason investors are so excited about the stock.”