Was the Amazon Upgrade Too Aggressive?

Raymond James sent an already powerful Outperform rating up to its strongest rating possible on Thursday — Strong Buy. What is interesting about this call is that the firm’s $640 price target remains in place. It was the pullback in recent days that was the impetus here as an attractive entry point.

Several issues were featured in the upgrade issued by analyst Aaron Kessler of Raymond James. Among them were better leverage on margins and growth. Kessler also highlighted a core business jump in operating margins, and the international operating margins are even expected do better as well.

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One thing stood out here: Amazon has very limited exposure to China. Also worth noting is that, despite some fears and worries about this ahead, there just has not been any real weakness in North America or Europe. Amazon is expected to spend less ahead on making its own devices, which means that the revenue bump from the products is not bringing income.

Additional highlights from Raymond James are higher market share and the stellar Amazon Web Services growth — expected to be 60% this year and to be another 40% in 2016. Third party revenue growth also is driving the cart here, rising from 40% to 45% of total revenue.

Again, the only question here is whether the call was just too aggressive. 24/7 Wall St. has warned readers that analyst price targets need to come down. Most analysts project 8% to 15% upside in Dow or top S&P 500 stocks.

Right now it seems that analysts are figuring out ways to keep their price targets high. Whether that lasts will be based on whether the market decides to roll over again.

Amazon shares were last seen up 3% at $518.96 in Thursday afternoon trading. This stock closed at $463.37 on Monday, $466.37 on Tuesday and $500.77 on Wednesday. Amazon’s consensus price target is $648.24, and it has a 52-week trading range of $284.00 to $580.57.

For whatever it is worth, Oppenheimer was the firm that nailed Amazon on the head in recent days. That firm named Amazon as one of seven bull market leaders to buy in the pullback.

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