Technology
Did Amazon Really Deserve Analyst Downgrade to Sell After Great Earnings?
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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) managed to show that the company can start caring about earnings and operating margin again. The levels of profitability and margin may be extremely low compared to other tech giants and to companies that are now 20 years old, but the effort seemed much better than what investors have seen lately from Amazon. It also blew away earnings estimates. So, why did one analyst downgrade Amazon to a dreadful Sell rating?
S&P Capital IQ’s Tuna Amobi downgraded Amazon to a Sell from an already cautious Hold rating on Friday. The move came after the shares popped higher from the earnings news. Amobi said:
We see potential downside to the shares, up some 11% on Q4 results that exceeded tempered expectations. With significantly higher fulfillment and peripheral costs (e.g. Web Services, Prime Video content), we trim 2015 earnings per share estimate by $0.84 to $0.44 and set 16’s at $3.19. We are wary of a slowdown in the international unit and the overall media business, and see continuing pressures on key performance metrics such as ROIC, operating margins and free cash flow. Our 12-month target stays $300, on 2016E EV/EBITDA of 12.8X and P/E of 94X, relatively ample to Internet retail peers.
Not everyone in the analyst community agreed that Amazon should be downgraded. In fact, most analysts released positive reports and price target hikes after the report.
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Bank of America Merrill Lynch not only maintained its Buy rating, but it raised its price target to $400 from its previous target of $360. The report cited the strong gross margin, as well as what should be significantly higher revenue growth and option value on multiple strategic initiatives ahead.
24/7 Wall St. has viewed many other analyst notes, and here are the key drivers that interested investors the most about the Amazon earnings report:
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Other analyst report summaries worth noting were as follows:
Amazon shares closed up 13.7% to $354.53 Friday, against a 52-week trading range of $284.00 to $383.11.
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