Amazon stock will add to its historic run in 2018 thanks to its booming advertising business, according to a new bull on Wall Street.
BMO Capital Markets raised its price target on Amazon to $1,600 from $1,200, the highest 12-month forecast on the e-commerce company of any brokerage on Wall Street. The target represents a 23 percent gain from Friday’s close of $1,305.20.
“We believe the emergence of Amazon’s advertising business can support both margin and multiple expansion and could be a greater catalyst for the shares if management shares more data points like it did for Amazon Web Services,” wrote BMO analyst Daniel Salmon on Monday. “The end result is greater confidence in the company’s advertising opportunity and an increase in our estimates.”
The analyst’s new price target implies a market cap of $771 billion given the current level of common stock. Shares rose more than 1 percent in premarket trading Tuesday.
Markets were closed Monday in celebration of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
Salmon noted that the company’s sponsored product ads, headline search ads and product display ads present the company with an $18 billion revenue opportunity in the mid-term. Amazon may also see a bump in revenue when it starts recording certain advertising fees as revenue, the analyst added.
Ken Sena of Wells Fargo is now the second most bullish analyst on Wall Street on the stock with a $1,525 12-month target, according to FactSet. Three others have $1,500 price targets.
While the company’s stock appreciated 60 percent in the past 12 months, nearly 12 percent of that gain has occurred in 2018 alone. But despite the dramatic rise, Wall Street has remained largely positive on shares. Echoing Salmon’s sentiment, Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson reiterated his buy rating last week.
“Amazon, despite its size and continued strong growth, is arguably still in the early innings of its share gain potential, even in the company’s most penetrated market,” Olson wrote last Tuesday.
Olson increased his price target for Amazon shares to $1,400 from $1,200 last week.
Amazon to pop 23% this year to near 0 billion value, says Wall Street's new biggest bull on stock