Technology

What Drove 2 Amazon Upgrades Ahead of Earnings

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is set to report earnings this week on Thursday after the close of trading. While the retailer of everything online has been previewed along with six other top tech giants on deck with earnings this week, it was interesting to see that two different analysts upgraded Amazon on Monday morning.

One upgrade was from Wedbush Securities, wherein the firm raised its rating to Outperform from Neutral and its price target to $575 from $435. Cowen was the second upgrade, and that firm raised its rating to Outperform from Market Perform and its price target to $565 from $435.

As far as what to expect from earnings this week, the consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters is for a net loss of $0.14 per share on $22.37 billion in revenue. That would compare to -$0.27 in earnings per share and $19.34 billion a year ago. While Amazon shares have soared in its 20 years, more than 15 of which it has been public, the public’s addiction to Amazon meets an investor conundrum where the company just does not seem anywhere near profitable enough, when you consider how many business sectors it has disrupted.

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There is yet another conundrum here in the guidance for the coming quarter and annual revenue. Amazon hosted its Prime Day last week and had more deals than Black Friday. While this may only add more margin pressure, it came with record numbers and on the surface would seem to give cover for Amazon to raise its revenue projections.

The Wedbush upgrade is interesting not just because Amazon is up 55% so far in 2015, nor that the gain is almost 13% in the past month alone. It is interesting because the firm has been on the sidelines for two years, worried about that endless margin pressure. Now it is the Amazon Web Services (AWS) business that is driving the cart in the call, which could lead to dramatic profit growth. Prime Day was also cited in that upgrade.

Cowen’s upgrade projected that Amazon will become the top dog in online apparel sales by 2017. The firm believes that Amazon’s order fulfillment and its technology is paying off in helping the online giant win more toward maximizing its total addressable market. Cowen also talked up Amazon’s public cloud market (AWS) as well.

Now what investors have to consider is that there should already be a lot of good news and positive anticipation priced in here. Still, Jeff Bezos and his team have a history of volatile earnings with upside and downside.

Amazon shares closed at $483.01 on Friday, and the consensus analyst price target was last seen at $473.81. The 52-week trading range was $284.00 to $485.42, but the gain of 1% to $488 (and intraday high of $493.20) on Monday represents a new high.

When you consider that the earnings estimates are $2.88 per share for 2016, that means that Amazon is trading at about 170 times next year’s earnings. Needless to say, that is a very high multiple for a company that is 20 years old.

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Elsewhere, analyst price hikes are sometimes more than just aggressive when they all point the same way. Here is how high analysts have chased Google’s price targets up and how high they chased up the Netflix price targets.

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