Amazon’s share price has popped after the online giant’s stellar results, and analysts are predicting further rises.
While Amazon (AMZN) shares fell more than 4% during regular trading Thursday, they rose 6.2% in after-hours trading.
Analysts from Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Mizuho, J.P. Morgan, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch all raised their price targets for the company, to as much as $1,750 (Credit Suisse). The closing price Thursday was $1,390.
“While profitability is taking a step back, we believe Amazon is once again investing ahead of growth in commerce and voice search,” Mizuho said in a note, quoted by CNBC.
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That reference to profitability related to Amazon’s forecast for the first quarter of 2018, when it said operating income would be between $300 million and $1 billion, rather than the $1.5 billion people were expecting to see.
Profitability for the quarter Amazon just reported was another matter, with net income of $1.86 billion, the most it’s ever posted.
That was aided by the fact that Amazon seized around half of all e-commerce holiday season sales, which was in turn probably helped by rising numbers of Prime subscribers. Revenues from those subscription fees grew 49% to $3.2 billion, with over 4 million people signing up in one week alone.
Amazon Prime is set to cost 18% more under a recently-announced price hike from $10.99 a month to $12.99 a month.
