Prime Day is over, but Amazon’s growth story continues. The Amazon Maven scans the latest Wall Street research reports and explains how some analysts see Amazon stock rising another 30%.
Prime Day,Amazon’s “summer Black Friday”, has come and gone. Wall Street did not seem overlyconfidentthat this year’s event will be a game changer for Amazon stock, which may explain why share price has remained stuck trading around $3,450 since mid-June.
Still, a few analysts believe that AMZN could still climb 30% from current levels. Following the important sales event on the e-commerce giant’s calendar, the Amazon Maven looks at the most recent opinions issued by Wall Street experts and assesses the bull case.
Strength in e-commerce and cloud
At the highest level, Amazon makes money through two distinct businesses: e-commerce and cloud. Good news for the Seattle-based company and its shareholders, these industries have been growing fast lately – and Amazon enjoys an enviable position of market leadership in both.
Bank of America, whose analyst believes that Amazon stock can rise 27% from here,seems to know at least one key ingredient to Amazon’s success on the e-commerce side: its delivery system. Justin Post thinks that Amazon will grow its fulfillment footprint by 40% this year alone, the equivalent of Walmart’s entire distribution center space.
Mr. Post’s research aligns with the findings of Jefferies’ Brent Till, who has a $4,200 price target on AMZN.According to him, Amazon’s fulfilment capacity should rise about 50% in the next one to two years. The expanded infrastructure could allow Amazon to move to breakeven same-day delivery, and to compete better by bringing last-mile delivery in-house.
The improved distribution system may help Amazon with another of its businesses that could use a boost: groceries. Loop Capitalreportsthat over 50% of Prime subscribers order groceries online, of which three-fourths use either Amazon or Whole Foods (an Amazon subsidiary) only. Some of the perceived issues with fresh produce availability could be addressed with a better delivery network.
On the other hand, cloud has not been a hot topic of conversation among analysts lately. But the Amazon Maven recently pointed out how the cloud infrastructure space (IaaS) grew at a dizzying 41% pace in 2020 – and Amazon remains the undisputed king of cloud, controlling 40% of the IaaS market.
Not stellar, not terrible either
Lastly, and despite Amazon’s Prime Day 2021 not being a center-stage argument in most analysts’ investment theses, one bull still sees reasons to be excited. Evercore ISI has a $4,500 price target on AMZN, suggesting 30% upside from end-of-June share price.
The research shop noted that Amazon sold more than 250 million items on Prime Day, which represents a compounded annual increase of more than 20% over 2019. Considering that a pandemic and a flash recession took place within these past 24 months, Prime Day unit sales growth did not look bad at all.