Technology

Analyst Has 2 Technology Giant Stocks to Buy in Front of Earnings

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With the first-quarter earnings for the most part coming in solid so far, it’s always a coin toss to determine if one should buy stock prior to the numbers or wait for the results. Typically, large cap technology stocks are a little more predictable than say a biotech company, but it always remains a far more volatile time to buy then long after earnings — good, bad or indifferent — have been factored in.

A new Wedbush report focuses in on upcoming earnings, and the companies they feel will show a reasonably good print based on solid business during the quarter. The analysts feel that may be a good buy in front of their earnings releases next week.

Amazon

This company is the absolute leader in online retail, as well as a dominate player in cloud storage business, but it missed estimates badly and got hit hard in January. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) serves consumers through retail websites, which primarily include merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers. In addition, the company serves developers and enterprises through Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides compute, storage, database, analytics, applications and deployment services that enable virtually various businesses.

AWS is the undisputed leader in the cloud now, and Merrill Lynch sees the company expanding and moving up the enterprise information value chain and addressing a larger total available market. The company has had numerous recent product announcements, including Aurora for relational database engine, Quicksight for business intelligence and AWS Database Migration Support Service.


Some analysts also think that AWS will continue to be a huge driver of Amazon’s operating profit growth, growing an astonishing 55% year over year in 2016 to $12.2 billion. In the sum-of-the-parts analysis, AWS is a staggering $202 per share, over a third of the current dollar amount. Wedbush expects the company to beat current estimates but cautions it could announce an earnings reset for 2016 and 2017. The company is expected to report April 28.

The Wedbush price target for the stock is $700, and the Thomson/First Call consensus price objective is higher at $732.78. Shares closed on Thursday at $631.

Facebook

The huge social media leader has posted gigantic numbers that truly blew away most of Wall Street. Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has Instagram, in which some analysts see revenues tripling in 2017 as opposed to 2016, and Premium video and Graph Search capabilities to strengthen the social media giant’s earnings flow. Top analysts have noted in the past that Facebook and Instagram account for 5% of users total media time, but the company doesn’t come close to capturing 5% of total advertising budgets. Instagram advertising opened up in the fourth quarter. The company reported revenues for the December quarter that were 10% ahead of many Wall Street estimates.

Most Wall Street analysts point to the fact that Facebook remains the top beneficiary of the adoption of mobile internet trends with total U.S. internet time spent on Facebook and Messenger. Other metrics continue to explode, and the key is that no viable challengers are anywhere in sight. Wedbush thinks the company once again beats estimates, citing the mobile advertising growth and overall innovation at the company. Facebook will report on April 27.

Analysts also remain bullish on Facebook Live, which was first rolled out only for iPhone users with verified accounts — a designation limited to journalists, celebrities and other public persons — but now anyone with an Android or iPhone can shoot live video from their phone, which can be viewed by Facebook users on any platform. To use it, you just go to the place where you would normally post a status update, but press the icon that shows a person inside a circle. This is yet another huge add-on for the social media market leader.

Wedbush has a $128 price objective, and the consensus price target is higher at $135.30. The shares closed Thursday at $113.44.

Needless to say, things could go awry, but these two mega cap monsters dominate their respective tech arenas and should have solid, and perhaps spectacular, first-quarter results.

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