With online Black Friday spending up nearly 17 percent since Black Friday 2016, one analyst told CNBC that he has never seen a better holiday sales outlook for e-commerce giant Amazon.
"I have to say that this is probably the best setup for Amazon, at least for the holiday shopping season, that I've seen in the 15 years we've covered the stock," Victor Anthony, managing director of internet media at Aegis Capital, said on "Squawk Alley" on Friday.
Shares of Amazon hit an all-time high intraday as U.S. consumers poured hundreds of millions of dollars into both on- and offline purchases.
According to Adobe Analytics, shoppers collectively spent a record $5.03 billion online by the end of Black Friday. Mobile visits accounted for a record 55.7 percent of traffic, Adobe said.
Anthony attributed Amazon's strength in particular to its home devices, Amazon Alexa and the Echo, the accelerating growth of e-commerce and the performance of its mobile app.
"On the mobile side for Amazon, when I took a look at the app downloads this year, they had by far the highest number of app downloads — eBay coming in second — of any company within the U.S.," the analyst said.
Amazon's app also had the best performance on Thanksgiving Day, Anthony added.
Oliver Chen, managing director and senior equity research analyst of retail and luxury goods at Cowen, acknowledged that Amazon is undoubtedly "a threat" to traditional retailers but said the "social experience" shoppers chase on Black Friday would be a boon for brick and mortar.
"That's something that can't really be replicated online, but I do agree [that] voice technology, home, automation, thinking about artificial intelligence, that is the future of retail," Chen said. "Our view here is that bricks plus clicks matters, and physical stores still matter as well. But Amazon is something to watch."
Former Hudson's Bay CEO Gerald Storch shared the "bricks plus clicks" view on CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Friday.
"Amazon is an amazing company; they're doing great, but this is far from over," the CEO said. "There's going to be a race for companies that can put together bricks-and-mortar and online shopping in the best combination. It's not all going to be home delivery, because home delivery's too expensive. No one can make money running a business that's purely home delivery with free shipping and free returns."
Storch, now CEO of Storch Advisors, left the helm of the department store chain suddenly last month amid a corporate restructuring.
While he wouldn't comment on Hudson's Bay's performance since his departure, Storch did give his take on the broader retail landscape, which he said was ripe for a "shakeout."
"There's way too many stores in the U.S. The U.S. has, depending on how you count it, five to 10 times as much square footage per capita as in Europe," Storch said. "There's clearly going to be a change here."
Storch said the pattern of major retailers shutting down locations, restructuring, recapitalizing and boosting M&A activity speaks volumes to this broader trend.
"It always gets better for the consumer. Products get cheaper [and] only the efficient thrive and survive," he said. "It's capitalism at work."
WATCH: Former Hudson Bay CEO on competing with Amazon
