aws2Starting this year Amazon shareholders will know exactly how much revenue the company generates from its cloud computing business when it starts to break out the division’s results for the first time.

But that isn’t stopping at least one analyst from throwing out an early guess. In a note to investors today, analysts at Robert W. Baird said it was valuing Amazon Web Services at $40 to $50 billion, or $95 per share, on a standalone basis, TheStreet reports.

At the end of last quarter, Amazon said it will start breaking out the unit’s financials in Q1 of this year. Before, it was lumping AWS results under an “other” category for North American sales. That total category generated $1.67 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, but it also included advertising services and co-branded credit card agreements.

The investment banking company also said it believed AWS could become an increasingly important part of the retailer’s business, generating a $20 billion run-rate by 2020.

During the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak did not offer an explanation as to why Amazon will start breaking out the numbers this year, adding “we just think it’s an appropriate way to look at our business for 2015. And so our plan is to separating it out as of Q1 of this year.”

Previously, Amazon has said that it has more than one million active AWS customers, and that usage grew 90 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the year earlier.

Other companies, like Microsoft and Google, will find the numbers particularly interesting, and just last night Alibaba said it was opening a data center in Silicon Valley — its first outside of China — to step up its competition with Amazon.

Based on the performance of AWS, Robert W. Baird also assigned Amazon a higher price target of $425, up from $380. The new price target did very little to influence Amazon’s shares, which were essentially flat today at $384.78.

 

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