Amazon Is One Of These Analyst's Favorite Long-Term Ideas

• Pacific Crest on Monday reiterated an Outperform rating and $800.00 price target on shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).
• The analysts argued that holiday trends looked robust.
• This reinforces the firm’s view that the company will go on to disrupt the retail space.

Pacific Crest analysts estimate that the company’s holiday sales rose 22 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2015, mainly driven by strong non-apparel growth and robust trends in its apparel business, which is still in its early stages. According to ComScore, Amazon saw the number of unique (desktop) visitors increase by 7.8 percent year-over-year for the November-December period. For its part, ChannelAdvisor estimated a 17 percent holiday sales growth rate.

Related Link: Amazon A Better Bet This Year Than Facebook Or Google, Bernstein Predicts

While high AWS investments create some margin uncertainty in 2016, the pace of expansion backs the thesis of accelerating cloud share gains, Pacific Crest said. All of this reinforces the firm’s view that the company will go on to disrupt the retail environment.

A Long-Term Favorite

In line with the arguments above, analysts at Pacific Crest are bullish on Amazon, and reiterated an Outperform rating and $800.00 price target, naming it as one of their favorite long-term ideas. The decline of almost 12 percent that the shares saw since the beginning of the year “partially factors in model seasonality and potential margin risk as AWS elevates investments in 2016," recommending to build positions on the weakness.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.