Amazon's Stock Gains After 'very Bullish' Analyst Boosts Stock Price Target

Amazon.com Inc. shares tacked on 0.6% in premarket trade Monday, after Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein said he was "very bullish" on the e-commerce giant, and raised his stock price target to $525 from $415, while keeping his rating at outperform. The new target is 24% above Friday's closing price of $422.87. Helfstein believes the Amazon web services business (AWS) is seeing "very strong momentum," and expects its share of global information technology services growing to 4.4% in 2023 from 0.8% currently. He believes Amazon will have 29% of the global e-commerce market share by 2023, up from 24% in 2014. "Furthermore, we believe AWS will continue to be a near-term catalyst for the stock, based on 2Q revenue acceleration from stronger demand and stable pricing," Helfstein wrote in a note to clients. The stock has surged 36% year to date, while the S&P 500 has gained 2.4%.