Investment bank Goldman Sachs (aka “Goldman”) has released a super bullish note on the seemingly pandemic-proof Amazon stock (NASDAQ: AMZN), and raised its 12-month price target from $2,600 to $2,900.
Zacks Equity Research says that Wall Street analysts’ consensus outlook for Amazon, which is expected to report its Q1 2020 earnings on April 30, is “a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues.”
This is Zacks’ consensus estimate:
“This online retailer is expected to post quarterly earnings of $6.31 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -11%.
“Revenues are expected to be $73.30 billion, up 22.8% from the year-ago quarter.”
Here are average, low, and high earnings and revenue estimates for Q1 2020 from the 40+ analysts covering Amazon stock, according to data from Yahoo Finance:
According to TheStreet, Goldman’s analysts had this to say about Amazon:
“We expect Amazon to report results well above consensus expectations on revenue and profitability while guiding 2Q above consensus on both metrics.
“The increase in demand the company’s retail, AWS, and ads businesses is seeing and Amazon’s ability to meet the challenges of this demand, will, we believe, serve to steepen the curve of its long term growth rate, drive incremental profitability, and further deepen the competitive moat around all of its businesses.
“While the stock has outperformed significantly, we believe the market continues to underestimate the long term value of the Amazon platform as the leader in both the movement of retail online and compute into the cloud, the realization of which is being accelerated by the current crisis along with consumer and enterprise adoption.
“Therefore, we continue to believe Amazon represents the best risk/reward in the Internet sector and remain Buy-rated.”
Last month, Jim Cramer, a former stockbrocker at Goldman Sachs, as well as the host of CNBC show “Mad Money”, said on CNBC show “Squawk on the Street”:
“I think Amazon could go to $3,000 in this market.”
On April 16, Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sent a letter to the shareholders, which talked about the steps that his company has taken to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.
One of these was hiring many thousands of new employees to handle the extra demand from customers in the midst of the lockdowns around the world:
“In March, we opened 100,000 new positions across our fulfillment and delivery network. Earlier this week, after successfully filling those roles, we announced we were creating another 75,000 jobs to respond to customer demand.”
Per data from Google Finance, Amazon stock closed yesterday at $2,399.45 (up 1.52 on the day):
In the year-to-date period, Amazon stock is up 26.44%.
