Amazon (AMZN) – Prime Growth & Another Bullish Sell-Sider – April 20, 2024
Amazon Prime reached 180 million members in the USA with 8% Y/Y growth – per Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Concerns were building around 2022 and early 2023 about slowing growth here. Many creative reasons were used to explain short-term declines in membership. But the only reason we needed was the historically aggressive pandemic pull-forward and relatedly tough comps. Those tough comps have now been lapped and growth is magically accelerating. What a concept.
In other Amazon news, more sell-siders (DA Davidson and Truist this week) lined up to publish bullish notes on the company. Like all of the other notes we’ve covered recently (and as my investment case spelled out before all of them), profit estimates have not caught up to reality and Amazon is poised to outperform. The only issue here is that every sell-sider is saying this and they are all raising estimates. That raises the bar for success heading into the current quarter. Not relevant for the long term investment case, but relevant for the set-up for those of you utilizing other approaches.