Technology

How Analysts View Amazon After Disappointing Q4 Earnings

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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was a very big disappointment when it reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2015. Or was it? The stock ran up handily on the day that earnings were expected, and the big drop actually just brought the stock back down to where it had been before.

24/7 Wall St. wanted to revisit the earnings highlights, but more importantly wanted to see how the largely over-bullish analysts on Wall Street treated Amazon after the earnings report. It turns out that the analysts pretty much stayed positive with their official ratings while trimming some of the wild upside expectations.

Amazon’s reported earnings of $1.00 per share were way short of estimates, due in part to higher fulfillment and shipping costs. Even a 22% sales gain (26% if you count foreign exchange pressure) to $35.7 billion was shy of estimates. Thomson/First Call had the consensus estimates set at $35.93 billion in revenue and $1.56 in earnings per share.

Amazon’s guidance of between $26.5 billion and $29.0 billion in sales for the coming quarter compared with a consensus estimate of $27.65 billion, and Amazon guided operating income to $100 million to $700 million, versus $255 million in the first quarter 2015.


Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the big winner here, and this is one key area where analysts have decided to remain overly bullish on Amazon. AWS sales were $2.405 billion (with $687 million in operating income) in the fourth quarter, up sharply from the $1.42 billion (and $240 million in operating income) in the last quarter of 2014.

Amazon had a consensus analyst price target of $748.67 prior to the report, and the consensus had drifted down to $738.50 or so by the end of Friday. That consensus from Thomson/First Call is likely to come down in the days ahead as the price targets get fully reflected into the analyst matrix.

JPMorgan kept an Overweight rating while raising its price target to $825 from $800. Raymond James has a strong Buy rating and raised its target to $760 from $745. S&P Capital IQ actually raised 2016 earnings estimates by $0.91 per share to $5.46 and set its 2017 estimate at $9.98 per share. It kept a Buy rating and $685 target price.

Other key analyst calls that remained positive, but with lowered expectations on price targets, were seen as follows on Friday:

  • Bank of America Merrill Lynch kept its Buy rating but lowered its target price objective to $750 from $775.
  • Barclays maintained its Overweight rating but lowered its target price to $800 from $850.
  • Citigroup maintained its Buy rating but lowered its target to $780 from $785.
  • Cowen kept an Outperform rating but lowered its target to $750 from $770.
  • JMP Securities kept its Market Outperform rating but lowered its target to $710 from $740.
  • Macquarie maintained its Outperform rating but lowered its target to $725 from $760.
  • Mizuho Securities kept its Buy rating but cut its target to $685 from $720.
  • Nomura Securities kept its Buy rating but lowered its target to $750 from $850.
  • Oppenheimer maintained its Outperform rating but lowered its target to $700 from $745.
  • RBC Capital Markets kept its Outperform rating but lowered its target to $715 from $775.
  • UBS kept its Buy rating but lowered its target price to $720 from $750.

As a reminder, Amazon shares closed up 8.9% at $635.35 ahead of earnings. The after-hours dip of over 13%, or to $548.00, was far worse than what ended up being the case by Friday’s close at -7.6% at $587.00. Amazon has a 52-week trading range of $299.33 to $696.44.

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