Investor sentiment about Amazon Inc. (AMZN, Financial)
Amazon is currently trading at $713.23 per share, up $10.16 or 1.45% on May 11. For the year to date, the stock has appreciated by as much as 5.60%, which is substantial given the state of global markets in the first quarter. Amazon started the year at $675.89, and hit a low of $482.07 on Feb. 9. The stock has a 52-week trading range of $418.36 on the low end and $719 on the high end. This indicates that investors who bought in at the year low have made substantial gains on the stock. It has a price/earnings ratio of 570.58 and EPS of $1.25. The one-year target price for Amazon stock is $801.95, and the market capitalization based on current prices is $336.52 billion.
If we turn our attention to the recommendation summary according to Thompson/First Call, Amazon has a rating for the present week of 1.8, on a ratings scale of 1.0 (strong buy) to 5.0 (strong sell). In the first week of May, Amazon was rated at 1.9, a clear indication that the stock is increasingly bullish. The high price target for the stock is $1,000 and the low price target is $625. The upgrades and downgrades history of Amazon paints an interesting picture in 2016. The following ratings have been suggested:
- On Jan. 4, Monness Crespi & Hardt downgraded the stock from a buy to a neutral rating.
- On Jan. 15, Susquehanna initiated a positive performance rating for the stock.
- On Feb. 18, Canaccord Genuity upgraded the stock from a hold to a buy.
- On March 22, Raymond James downgraded the stock from a strong buy to an outperform rating.
Analysts highly bullish on Amazon stock
Retail stocks were pummeled on May 11, but one stood head and shoulders above the competition – Amazon. The stock gained 1.5% and hit $713.40 on the day. The company’s valuation at this price is astronomical – $336.52 billion. Analysts across the board are in agreement: Amazon rules the retail roost. The fact of the matter is that as time goes by, traditional retail outlets are seeing an increasing number of sales being lost to e-commerce websites like Amazon – the king of retail in the U.S. A research group found that online retail expenditure will rise in value by $190 billion between 2015 and 2020. And spearheading the online retail initiative is none other than Amazon, with a full 60% of all growth in the sector. This does not mean that the traditional retail shopping experience is dead and buried; on the contrary there is an appetite for retail shopping because customers will always want the human interactive aspect. There has been a paradigm shift in the retail sector over the past decade from Walmart (WMT, Financial) to Amazon, and the trends keep shifting towards online shopping.
