Shares of Amazon.com have already been on an amazing ascent in the past 12 months, up a whopping 67 percent during that time period. And shares of the online retailer are getting another boost today after Morgan Stanley issued a bullish report on the company’s future prospects. Shares jumped over $200 per share, trading up nearly five percent on the news.
Morgan Stanley boosted its price target on Amazon from $225 to $245.
“Amazon.com’s global market share opportunity remains under-estimated by the market,” Morgan Stanly wrote in the research note. “Amazon.com is growing 4 times/2.5 times the rate of eCommerce in the US/international markets, respectively. We expect category/geographic expansion and new product cycle(s) to continue to drive meaningful share gains over the next 5-20 years.”
Morgan Stanley has been bullish on Amazon before. You may recall some of Mary Meeker’s bold predictions about the online retailer during the dot-com boom of the late 90s. (Meeker has since left Morgan Stanley and now works with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that bankrolled Amazon and many other consumer Internet startups).
Amazon now boasts a market value of $91 billion. Amazingly, had you purchased shares of Amazon near the top of the tech bubble in December 2009, and then held those shares until today, you would have nearly doubled your money.
Think it will top $100 billion this summer and eclipse Microsoft’s market value of ($214 billion) in the next three years? (Interestingly, Microsoft’s stock is up just over four percent in trading today as well following a drop last week).
Hat tip to The Wall Street Journal, which notes that Amazon’s shares have traded between $161 and $206 so far this year. Here’s a look at Amazon’s stock surge over the past 12 months.
Previously on GeekWire: Jeff Bezos on innovation: Amazon ‘willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.'”
