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Amazon has doubled its stock price in just 17 months but Wall Street sees another 20% upside

Jeff Bezos
Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos Mike Segar/Reuters

Amazon has been trading at an all-time high lately, shattering the $800 mark for the first time late last month. Now it's hovering around $840 per share.

But a number of Wall Street analysts see another 20% upside in Amazon, with big firms like Evercore, RBC, and Bernstein each raising their price targets to $1,000 in the past few weeks.

And on Wednesday, yet another high-profile firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, joined the bandwagon, also raising Amazon's price target to $1,000.

"While the stock does not look cheap on 2017 estimates, we believe investors need to take a longer term view — i.e., as long as Amazon continues to gain share in this $10 trillion-plus market and shows steady margin improvements, the stock should continue to grind higher," Canter Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali wrote in the note.

Squali narrowed down his bullishness to the following six factors:

  • The e-commerce market keeps growing: comScore sees ~15% year-over-year growth in e-commerce, up from last year's ~9%. And that's excluding mobile commerce, which is growing in importance. "Amazon, as the largest e-commerce company, is disproportionately positioned to benefit from this trend," Squali writes.
  • Prime continues to add value: Amazon's premium membership service Prime continues to add perks, like free e-books, on top of free video and music streaming, two-day shipping, and online file storage space. That'll continue to attract new Prime users, who clearly spend significantly more on Amazon.com than non-Prime users. "Given the propensity of Prime members to spend 2-3x more annually than non-Prime members, we estimate that the company’s robust pace of growth is likely to continue," he writes.
  • Prime Day was the largest in Amazon history: Prime Day, Amazon's one-day shopping holiday in July, was the largest in company history and is likely to boost its sales growth, he notes.
  • Strong holiday e-commerce sales forecast: E-commerce sales is expected to grow 17% to 19% during the peak November to January holiday season, compared to the ~15% growth in the first half of the year. "This augurs well for Amazon, given its dominant position in online retail," Squali writes.
  • Amazon is becoming the starting point for product search: According to BloomReach, 55% of consumers start their shopping search on Amazon, up from last year's 44%. It shows Amazon is tightening its grip in online retail and is becoming the first destination for shopping search, instead of using other search engines like Google.
  • No real competitive threat in e-commerce: Although Walmart is aggressively investing in this space (~$11 billion over the next two years), there's no real major threat for Amazon, Squali writes. "While it remains to be seen how this effort plays out, we do not expect [Walmart] to slow Amazon's current momentum, given the latter’s significant lead online offering and a sizable and growing Prime member base," he writes.
  • AWS is so profitable, it allows Amazon to invest in other areas: AWS continues to see ~50% revenue growth with a solid 25% margin, even at the scale of a $10 billion-plus run rate, allowing Amazon to invest in new initiatives, like faster delivery, physical storefronts, and streaming video. In fact, Amazon continues to hit record-high profits, as the chart below shows.
Screen Shot 2016 10 12 at 12.18.48 PM
Canter Fitzgerald
Amazon Jeff Bezos
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