2 Tech Companies That Crushed It on Black Friday Weekend
As 2017's Black Friday and Cyber Monday fade into the past, investors can look back at how some companies performed during the important shopping weekend. While businesses' quarterly earnings reports for the holiday period will likely provide the most useful window into how the weekend impacted their results, some insightful stats have already surfaced.
Two companies, in particular, absolutely crushed it. Here's a look at how Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) capitalized on the shopping holidays.
Amazon
It's really no surprise that Amazon was able to post yet another wildly successful shopping event. Not only did the the company see big growth during last year's Black Friday weekend, but this momentum continued to Amazon's Prime Day this summer, when the e-commerce giant posted its highest single-day sales ever.
On Tuesday, Amazon confirmed the long weekend between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday was huge for its Amazon-branded devices. The company sold more of its own devices than on any other holiday shopping weekend, and its Echo Dot was the top-selling product on Amazon globally. Other top-sellers included Amazon's Fire TV Stick, the second-generation Amazon Echo, and the Fire 7 tablet. Even Amazon's Kindle had its best holiday shopping weekend -- 10 years after the first version of the e-reader was released.
But Amazon's success during the shopping period went well beyond the impressive showing for its own devices. On Thursday, Amazon said Cyber Monday was the company's "single biggest shopping day worldwide in the company's history," even surpassing its record-shattering Prime Day in July. The "Turkey 5," or the five shopping days spanning from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, saw record levels of shopping as well, Amazon said.
More specifically, the company said total orders on Amazon.com from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday were in the hundreds of millions. In addition, the company said Amazon mobile app orders on Cyber Monday were up 50% globally year over year. Amazon also confirmed that its Echo Dot remained the best-selling item through Cyber Monday.
Sure, Facebook isn't a retailer. But its influence during Turkey 5 was unquestionable. From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, over 130 million people discussed shopping across Facebook's core social network and its photo- and video-sharing app Instagram, Facebook said in a report about data from the shopping holiday. Furthermore, including posts, comments, and reactions, there were nearly 370 million interactions about shopping across the two platforms during the five-day period.
Facebook also said video played a key role in user engagement during the shopping period:
While these statistics provide only a limited picture of how well Amazon and Facebook performed over the weekend, it's clear that both companies took advantage of the consumer frenzy.
Their success during the period is a good sign for shareholders. As Facebook noted in its report about the five-day shopping period, over half of its mobile-first shoppers (users who said they expect to make most of their holiday purchases on a mobile device) said they expect their shopping to continue beyond the holiday season.
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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Daniel Sparks owns shares of Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon and Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.