Advertisement
Australia markets closed

  • ALL ORDS

    7,898.90
    +37.90 (+0.48%)
     

  • AUD/USD

    0.6447
    +0.0010 (+0.15%)
     

  • ASX 200

    7,642.10
    +36.50 (+0.48%)
     

  • OIL

    81.61
    -1.08 (-1.31%)
     

  • GOLD

    2,397.50
    +9.10 (+0.38%)
     

  • Bitcoin AUD

    96,368.55
    -1,429.70 (-1.46%)
     

  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     

Amazon spikes 10% at open; CEO Jeff Bezos adds $5.1B in wealth

Fred Imbert
Peter Foley | Bloomberg | Getty Images. Goldman's "Hedge Fund VIP" list is up 19 percent this year through Aug. 14 versus the S&P 500's 12 percent return.

Amazon (AMZN)'s stock rose nearly 9.6 percent Friday after a slew of Wall Street analysts praised the e-commerce giant's first-quarter results.

At least 10 analyst firms raised their price targets on the stock. Among them was Stifel, who raised their target to $888 from $775.

"Amazon reported an impressive quarter as revenue and margins exceeded our and consensus estimates as well as surpassed the high-end of guidance," the firm said in a Friday note to clients.

In early trading, Amazon's stock traded near $660. It's opening spike added $5.1 billion to CEO Jeff Bezos ' wealth. With the jump in wealth, Bezos surpassed Carlos Slim , Mexico's telecommunications tycoon, as the fourth-richest person in the world.

ADVERTISEMENT

"Going into the quarter, we anticipated investment in logistics, AWS, and strategic geographic regions could work against the margin expansion. While we believe there will be heightened investment in these areas (which we support) that may make the progression to higher margins long-term bumpy, we must respect where the business is now. Relative to previous investment cycles, Amazon has more levers to offset the hit to margin," Stifel added.

Amazon reported first-quarter net income of $513 million, or $1.07 per share, on $29.13 billion in revenue, as its Amazon Web Services business rose 64 percent. Those figures compare with a loss of 12 cents per share and $22.72 billion in sales for the previous year.

Analysts expected Amazon to post earnings of 58 cents per share on $27.98 billion in revenue, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.

The company also benefited from strong adoption of its Prime services by users, analysts at JMP Securities said in a Friday note.

"Importantly, we believe the positive factors behind 1Q16 results are sustainable as Prime adoption globally creates scale benefits that should lead to continued consumer wallet share gains and, increasingly, to profitability, all of which were present in 1Q results," they said, adding they reiterated their "market outperform rating" and raised their price target to $775 from $602.

— CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.

Disclosures: Stifel and JMP are market makers for Amazon.



More From CNBC

  • Top News and Analysis

  • Latest News Video

  • Personal Finance