Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN, Financial) continues to move the needle on many fronts, including cloud computing. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which rents computing power and storage for corporate customers, is the leader in this space and continues to strengthen its competitive advantage through major feature releases, more data centers, and price cuts for several of its services. Although AWS recently announced annual revenue growth of approximately 60% and a profit margin of greater than 50%, we believe this segment of the business has much more room to grow. Another positive development for the stock was a significant shift in consumer buying trends during the holiday season as more people chose to do their shopping in the e-commerce marketplace rather than in bricks-and-mortar stores. This shift helped Amazon exceed earning expectations during the third quarter.
From the Meridian Equity Income Fund fourth quarter commentary.
