Online e-commerce behemoth Amazon (AMZN – Free Report) is heading toward $1-trillion market cap as its shares topped $2,000 for the first time. Shares of AMZN closed at $2,002.38 on Aug 29 and are just some dollars away from reaching 13-digit market capitalization. At $2,053 per share, Amazon will become the second U.S. trillion-dollar company after Apple (AAPL), which crossed the threshold on Aug 2.
Below, we have highlighted some solid reasons for the consistent surge:
Bullish Calls
Morgan Stanley (MS ) this week lifted Amazon’s price target from $1,850 per share to $2,500 per share, citing huge growth for the e-commerce giant’s traditional retail as well as web service units. At $2,500 stock price, Amazon would have a market valuation of about $1.2 trillion. This represents the highest price target on the Wall Street. In fact, 31 of 47 analysts surveyed by FactSet have stock price targets above Amazon’s $1 trillion market cap threshold of $2,050.27.
According to Baron Capital analyst Ashim Mehra, Amazon could double its value to about $2 trillion in three to five years driven by growth in advertising revenue and its cloud business.
Further, options traders bet Amazon will hit $1 trillion by next week.
Earnings Strength
Amazon shares was also boosted by its solid Q2 earnings, wherein it delivered massive earnings beat of 103.61% and the biggest quarterly profit of $2.5 billion in its history, powered by the fast-growing cloud computing business and strength in online sales.
Earnings per share came in at $5.07, more than double the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.49 and up by a wide margin the year-ago earnings of 40 cents. Revenues climbed 39% year over year to $52.9 billion but fell short of the estimate of $53.4 billion. In particular, revenues from the cloud computing business — Amazon Web Services (AWS) — surged 49% year over year to $6.1 billion.
For the third quarter of 2018, the company expects revenues to grow 23-31% to $54-$57.5 billion.
