Amazon.com Inc.’s shares are on track to notch their sixth month in a row of gains, which would make for their longest monthly winning streak in over 12 years.
The last time Amazon’s stock
AMZN,
gained for six consecutive months was the period that ended in July 2011, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Amazon shares are enjoying a nice pop to end the month, up 2.6% in Thursday morning action. They’re currently up 3.6% so far for the month.
The e-commerce and cloud-computing giant kicked off the month with an upbeat earnings report that indicated a stabilization of its Amazon Web Services business.
See more: The ‘stabilization’ of AWS may have been the most significant number for Amazon’s earnings
“Investor questions now shift to how fast AWS growth can re-accelerate given commentary that new workload migration is ramping up (supported by healthy backlog growth) while optimization efforts are winding down,” Bernstein analysts led by Mark Moerdler wrote in a note to clients last week.
The Bernstein team added that as concerns about AWS fade, “investors are increasingly paying attention to the retail business, which not only delivered healthy revenue growth, but also delivered impressive domestic operating margins.”
If Amazon is able to deliver persistent margin expansion, the company “may well be on the cusp” of “long-awaited” inflections in operating income and free cash flow, they said.
Amazon has gotten its share of love from Wall Street analysts this month, with Wedbush’s Scott Devitt naming the stock a “best idea” and Loop Research’s Rob Sanderson mapping out a path to a $200 price target. Shares were trading Thursday north of $138.
And the company announced late Wednesday that it was embarking on an enhanced collaboration with Shopify Inc.
SHOP,
SHOP,
through the launch of a “Buy with Prime” app for Shopify merchants that makes it easier for merchants to offer customers the option to leverage Prime benefits around shipping and fulfillment.
Read: Shopify’s stock pops after latest Amazon collaboration
“From the Amazon viewpoint, while they seemed reticent to enter into revenue-sharing agreements and cede payment processing to Shopify in the past, the compromise recognizes Shopify’s strong competition position among SMBs [small- and medium-sized businesses], and that native integration with Shopify’s platform could make Buy with Prime a more compelling option for merchants,” Baird analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a Thursday note to clients.
“It also helps Amazon gain further penetration with the Amazon Payments digital wallet, one of the goals of the Buy with Prime program,” he added.
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