Insights

Amazon’s growth story in a single chart

It took Amazon 18 years as a public company to catch Walmart in terms of market cap but only 2 more years to double it. On May 15, 1997, a money-losing online bookstore, Amazon.com, went public on the Nasdaq in an IPO that valued it at a modest $438 million. 20 years later, that startup is worth nearly $460 billion. To achieve this feat, Amazon directed nearly all of it’s cash into huge new investment areas, with a focus on growth over net income.