AMZN Forecast for 2017: Amazon’s Growth is Just Beginning

BlairThe article was written by Blair Goldenberg, a Financial Analyst at I Know First, and enrolled in a Masters of Finance at Colorado State University.

AMZN Forecast for 2017

Summary

  • Background on Amazon
  • Amazon’s Holiday Sales Reached New Highs
  • Amazon 2017 Forecast: Will AMZN cross $1000 Share Price line?

Background on Amazon

AMZN Forecast for 2017

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, later diversifying to sell DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably, Amazon Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and Fire TV—and is the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS). Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its in-house brand AmazonBasics.

Amazon’s Holiday Sales Reached New Highs

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Amazon’s holiday sales, namely Cyber Monday sales, have reached new highs. This year, Amazon has seen a 9.4% increase in spending compared to last year. This year consumers spent $3.36 billion on the site and now Amazon is taking the lead on online sales. On Thanksgiving day, consumers spent $1 billion on the sight and on Black Friday, they spent $3.34 billion. Altogether, over the Thanksgiving weekend, $7.7 billion was spent on the popular site. In 3 days, Amazon made 7.8% of the $99.25 billion they made in the entire Q3. The holiday sales aren’t over yet, and as more people use the internet to shop, the more Amazon sales we will see and I project that Q4 earnings will be well over the $99 billion figure.

It comes as no surprise that online shopping is becoming the new norm. Retail stores used to tower and make up their sales for the year on Black Friday, but as the shift to online shopping continues, regular stores have to adapt. Even with adaption popular stores such as Walmart and Macy’s are suffering because Amazon is seen as the go to spot for online shopping.

Amazon Prime accounts have also gone up recently. A Prime subscription costs $99 a year for customers. The perks of paying the $99 and becoming an Amazon Prime member is that they offer quick and free shipping (2 day) on select items. Amazon Prime offers other perks such as free access to Amazon Video, free and unlimited photo storage on their cloud, and the ability to borrow books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Amazon continually grows its perks for prime members and began to shift its growth to live streaming for sports which alone is worth more than the yearly $99 subscription.

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Competitor’s such as eBay and Alibaba, a Chinese owned company, don’t even come close to the wide range of benefits that Amazon provides. Both eBay and Alibaba take weeks to receive shipments. Alibaba is also more catered toward companies that want to buy products at wholesale, so it has its own niche that not everyone wants to buy from. Most consumers don’t want to buy a minimum of 100 pieces of the same product. While Alibaba is more catered toward companies rather than individuals, eBay and Alibaba’s consumer based company, AliExpress, are more comparable to Amazon. Amazon, AliExpress, and eBay all offer products in a wide arrange of areas, although eBay and AliExpress still lacks the main attractions on Amazon such as Amazon Video, free two day shipping, etc. With Amazon’s continued focus on growth, both Alibaba and eBay won’t be able to keep up and therefore will continue to be subpar competitors in 2017.

Amazon 2017 Forecast: Will AMZN cross $1000 Share Price line?

As of November 30, 2016, AMZN stands at $750.57, down $11.95 from its previous close. The holiday sales from Black Friday and Cyber Monday seem to not have affected the share price at all. However, many analysts are projecting that this coming year, they project that AMZN will hit the $1000 mark. In the last ten years, Amazon saw massive growth in 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2015. This upcoming year could be another year added to the list, which could possibly catapult Amazon over $1000 per share. AMZN has averaged a 33.8% return annually for ten years and currently, to achieve the share price, they need to average 33.2% by the end of 2017 (Retrieved from InvestorPlace).

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While this figure seems very hard to achieve, I believe that its entirely possible. In 2017, Amazon is set to expand into Southeast Asia, namely Singapore. With 5.4 million people living in the country, Amazon may attain thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of new customers, within the year. Singapore, apart from its fresh user base, can bring in more advantages. The expansion into Singapore can create a domino effect into other Southeast Asian countries, one of which is Indonesia which is the fourth most populated country in the world, bringing in an even larger consumer base for the company. Other countries that would follow are Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines (Retrieved from SeekingAlpha). Amazon will also be releasing its Amazon Prime Video subscription to the rest of the world, in order to take on Netflix.

Apart from the growth into new markets, Amazon may still continue to grow as online shopping becomes a staple, as we’ve seen with the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. There is still untapped potential within the United States on growing a bigger customer base. Many people use Amazon as a quick and easy shopping tool, purchasing items at any time, knowing that it will come within two days, however; there are still some people that don’t realize the possibilities they can achieve from Amazon. In other words, Amazon still has the ability to grow within its own country and not just abroad.

Conclusion

Amazon is only beginning their climb to success, they have so much more room to grow and the competition isn’t much of a threat. The I Know First algorithm predicts that the company will continue to have bullish returns, which I tend to agree with.

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How to interpret this diagram:

Algorithmic Stock Forecast

The table on the left is a stock forecast produced by I Know First’s algorithm. Each day, subscribers receive forecasts for six different time horizons. Note that the top ten stocks in the 1-month forecast may be different than those in the 1-year forecast. In the included table, only the relevant tickers have been included. The boxes are arranged according to their respective signal and predictability values (see below for detailed definitions). A green box represents a positive forecast, suggesting a long position, while a red represents a negative forecast, suggesting a short position.

Signal

This indicator represents the predicted movement/trend of the asset; not a percentage or specific target price. The signal strength indicates how much the current price deviates from what the system considers an equilibrium or “fair” price.

Predictability (P)

This value is obtained by calculating the average correlation coefficient between the past predictions and the actual asset movement for three discrete time periods. The averaging gives more weight to more recent performances. As the machine keeps learning, the values of P generally increase.