Amazon Hits New High As Market Cap Nears $332 Billion

By | May 10, 2016

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Amazon.com ( AMZN ) stock hit a record high of 704.55 Tuesday, passing its previous high of 696.44 set on Dec. 29 and giving the e-commerce giant a market valuation near $332 billion. The stock ended the regular trading session up 3.4% to 703.07 on the stock market today . Amazon has gained 62% in the past year. The jump comes as Sanford Bernstein analyst Carlos Kirjner raised his price target on Amazon to a whopping 1,000, which is 47% above its close of 679.75 on Monday. IBD’s Take: How healthy is Amazon’s stock and how does it compare to rivals? Find out at IBD Stock Checkup “We think Amazon’s businesses are now so large, fast-growing, and profitable that it is harder and harder for the company to find new areas of investment to keep up with the growth in gross profits,” Kirjner wrote in the report, according to a report from Bloomberg . Among areas of investment and growth is Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing unit that’s on pace to reach $12.5 billion in revenue this year. And thanks to its early entry in the business, AWS is now the leader in cloud computing, with a market share of 31%. The next closest competitor is Microsoft ( MSFT ) with 9%, followed by IBM ( IBM ) and Alphabet ‘s ( GOOGL ) Google Cloud. Among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, 11 have a strong buy rating on Amazon, 28 say buy and 4 say hold. The move up in Amazon comes as the company on Tuesday announced a new platform on its streaming video service that goes head-to-head with Alphabet-owned YouTube. The new platform, called Amazon Video Direct , lets anyone upload clips or their own licensed videos. Alphabet, which hit an all-time high of 810.35 on Feb. 5, rose 1.4% to 739.38 on Tuesday.  Alphabet posted its fifth straight gain, but it is still below its 50-day moving average. Scalper1 News

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