If You Invested $1,000 In Amazon 20 Years Ago, Here's How Much Money You'd Have Today

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is one of the greatest success stories in American business history. The Seattle-based firm began in the garage of founder Jeff Bezos in 1994, and it has since grown into one of the largest companies in the world by market cap. For sheer growth over the past 20 years, there are only a few stocks that have matched it. If you had invested $1,000 in Amazon 20 years ago, you would be sitting on nearly $2 million dollars today.

Amazon grew astronomically from its humble beginnings to now employ over 1.6 million workers, per the Nasdaq website. The e-commerce pioneer and powerhouse has mushroomed from a simple online bookstore into a multinational, multi-market corporation. It is now a leader in a few important specialty areas in both retail and technology.

A look at Amazon's milestones along the over two decade journey tells an incredible story. That innovation continues today with their expansion into physical and online grocery stores and even through online automobile sales. Those investors who have stayed the course with Amazon stock along the winding road have shared in its success to become millionaires.

What started as a novelty bookseller grew massively beyond book sales. No one guessed the enormous range of products the company would go on to sell. Few could have foreseen the revolution Amazon Web Services (AWS) would drive in the cloud computing industry. This AWS today makes up the bulk of its operating income, per Amazon investor relations. Among Amazon's branded household products are Amazon Echo Alexa, Kindle e-book readers, Amazon Prime TV subscription service, and even grocery store products from its takeover of Whole Foods grocery stores from which you can shop online for groceries to save money.

The company name is synonymous with online retail thanks to its sales of proprietary inventory along with a vast third-party network of sellers and fulfillment services. Its rapidly growing operations include areas of advertising, subscriptions, and web hosting.

By 2021 the company's e-commerce aggregation business had expanded to $386 billion of net sales and around $578 billion of digital and physical gross merchandise volume. The firm's retail-based revenue made up around 80% of this. Amazon Web Services cloud computing, database, storage, and additional service and product offerings comprised 10% to 15% of the balance of its business. The remaining 5% came from its advertising services. Amazon's international market sales make up anywhere from 25% to 30% of the total in recent years. Its leading three global marketplaces outside the U.S. are Germany, the U.K., and Japan, per Nasdaq's AMZN webpage. One of its chief competitors in the space is eBay.

Amazon's incredible run since its inception as a publicly traded company includes huge milestones. CNN's history of Amazon relates that in 2018, the firm's market cap topped $1 trillion for the first time, making it only the second company after Apple to do so. AMZN market cap today is $2.44 trillion.

The company's third quarter 2024 revenue and profit numbers remained impressive. Per the Amazon investor relations website, revenue came in at $158.88 billion, up 11%. On these sales figures the gross profit was $77.90 billion, up 14.5%.

Amazon's stock IPO debuted on May 15, 1997. If you had purchased $1,000 AMZN stock on the closing price IPO day 27 years ago, your stake would now be worth over $1.87 million. Per the Nasdaq article, you would be holding over 10,212 shares thanks to the numerous stock splits along the way. For those who got in 20 years ago — on December 1, 2004 — and held on, Barchart shows that your holdings today would have increased over 10,418% in value, an astonishing return for a company that set out to sell books online. Now you just need to know how to legally avoid paying taxes when you cash out.