Shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN, Financial) underwent a major re-rating in 2015 as the stock appreciated 118% amid a flat market return environment. Better financial disclosures around Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), led to the realization that the business is significantly larger, growing faster, and is already very profitable. AWS is estimated to have between 80% and 85% market share of all workloads that are being run in the cloud. The penetration of cloud-based workloads is less than 5% today and we believe it is poised for continued rapid growth. In the meantime, the core retail business is firing on all cylinders. During the Christmas holiday week alone, Amazon added three million new Prime members and shipped packages from 110 countries to customers located in 185 countries, with 70% of the orders coming from mobile devices. We believe that Amazon’s structural competitive advantages are strengthening with tens of millions of Prime members solidifying its grip on e-commerce, the unrivaled distribution footprint facilitating significant gains in third-party business, and AWS’s scale and dominance as a new computing platform creating and adding to the very meaningful benefits of the company’s network effect already in place.
From Baron Funds' Global Advantage Fund letter for the fourth quarter 2015.
