Amazon.com Inc.

We expect the cloud computing market to strengthen and the few large players, including AWS, will continue their rapid growth. Share shifts are less impactful in this market because it is still growing, but we expect AWS to maintain its lead share position. We expect cloud outlays will significantly outperform global IT spending growth for years to come. According to IDC, worldwide public cloud service revenue will increase by a 21.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2016 and 2021. Our stable rating outlook on Amazon.com Inc. reflects our expectation for strong cash flow generation, continued investment in growth, and that business conditions will remain favorable for online retailers and major cloud computing firms over the next two years. We

...Amazon has long demonstrated topline and market share growth in key businesses and continues to benefit from a first-mover advantage. We attribute Amazon's ongoing rapid retail revenue growth (see chart 1) to its first-mover advantage in creating and sustaining customer expectations for ease of purchase and fast, free delivery for the fee-based Prime loyalty program, which has over 100 million paying members. First-mover advantage was on full display when Amazon (Amazon Web Services [AWS]) inaugurated its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) business in 2006, offering access to raw compute and storage capacity to customers of all sizes. Since then, Amazon Web Services has continued to spend heavily, in the billions of dollars annually, and maintained its competitive advantage....

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