Amazon and Apple are great companies, but AMZN stock could outperform its peer in 2022. Here are the main reasons why.
The stocks of tech giants Amazon and Apple both experienced incredible gains in 2020: AMZN climbed 76% while APPL slightly outperformed its competitor with an incredible 81% return. With AMZN trailing so far this year, I wonder: which will be the better stock to own in 2022?
Amazon: cross-industry reach
It’s not hard to see why Amazon could outperform Apple in 2022. The Seattle-based company has developed a dominant global presence, and not just in retail. Amazon operates very competitively in high-growth industries that range from e-commerce to cloud services and from tech devices to advertising and streaming services.
Simply put, Amazon is a diversified tech giant that is growing revenues across all its business lines. The company continues to dominate online retail while also branching out into new emerging businesses, disrupting industries along the way.
Amazon's innovation
In addition to Amazon's dominance across multiple sectors, the tech company also continues to develop innovative products, such as its Echo and Alexa devices, which are quickly becoming a staple in many households. These products make it easier for Amazon to cross-sell their products and services, while increasing the total value of each transaction.
In addition, Amazon has successfully diversified more deeply across its services portfolio — think cloud infrastructure and streaming, for example. I think this is another advantage that Amazon has over Apple, which is still working to monetize its existing customer base (although the Cupertino company has been increasingly successful at it).
How high can AAPL go?
In the end, the debate may boil down to price and valuation. AAPL has undergone a strong but unusual rally in late November and early December, even after an amazing two years of returns in 2020 and 2021 YTD. Against the tech-rich Nasdaq index, AAPL's performance in the month prior to December 13 had been the second-best in the past ten years:a staggering 19.5 percentage point advantage over the benchmark.
True, the long-term bull thesis for Apple is compelling. Catalysts like the 5G-ready iPhone cycle and continued growth in the services segment could push the stock upwards in the foreseeable future. Apple should remain highly competitive in consumer tech devices and may soon become a key name in the metaverse. But how much of the upside potential to the stock may have already been priced in 2020 and 2021? Couldn’t 2022 be AMZN’s turn to shine?
Conclusion
In my view, Apple and Amazon are great companies, and the former deserves to be a part of a growth portfolio. But because AMZN stock has not rallied as much as AAPL has in the past few months, I believe shares of the cloud and e-commerce giant have a better chance of edging Apple in 2022.