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Investment Overview for Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)

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Below are key drivers of Amazon's value that present opportunities for upside or downside to the current Trefis price estimate for Amazon:

General Merchandise

• Amazon's International EGM Market Share: We currently forecast the share of Amazon's international electronics and general merchandise revenues in the international e-commerce market to increase from about 2% in 2015 to 2.7% by the end of our forecast period. However, given the intense competition in the space, there could be a 10% downside to our price estimate if this figure was to remain flat. On the other hand, there could be an upside of similar order if the figure jumps to over 3.5% instead.
• General Merchandise EBITDA Margin : We currently forecast Amazon's general merchandise EBITDA margin to rise to over 10% by the end of our forecast period. There could be 10% upside to our price estimate if these margins were to increase to more than 12.5% instead. On the other hand, there could be 10% downside if margins were to decline to under 8.5%.

Books, DVDs & Music

• Amazon International Online Books and Music Share: We currently forecast the share of Amazon's international books and music revenues in the international e-commerce market to decline marginally from 0.8% to 0.7%. However, there could be 10% upside to our price estimate if this figure was to increase to 1.7%, which may be a tough task given recent trends.

For additional details, select a driver above or select a division from the interactive Trefis split for Amazon at the top of the page.

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Amazon is an online retailer which sells books, DVDs, music, games, apparel and other merchandise to consumers in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, Japan and some other countries. The company also provides web services such as cloud computing and online storage to web sites and web developers. 

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General merchandise business is the most valuable segment for Amazon due to the company's high growth within this segment. During 2015, consolidated sales of electronics and general merchandise grew by 31% as compared to 8% rise in media sales. In addition, this segment accounted for roughly 70% of Amazon's total revenues during the same period. Unlike books and music, Amazon's general merchandise business has been gaining share in the global e-commerce market.

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Recent gains in profitability represents promising trend

After showing disappointing margin performance in Q3 2014, Amazon delivered promising trends on profitability in 2015. The company's operating margin was 2.1% in 2015, which came in above consensus market estimates. These high profits reflect efficiency improvements in the business. Also the same profitability was boosted by high profits in the North American region.

Growing high-margin cloud services business

The growth in Amazon's Web Services has become a critical factor driving the company's expansion globally. Several companies continued to adopt these services in 2015. Besides helping big businesses, the company’s cost efficient web services are also useful for young start-ups that may have cash restrictions.

The growth recently accelerated in the AWS segment - the annual growth in AWS revenues came in at 70% in 2015. Apart from this, the company also showed strong profitability in the cloud-services business, as the operating margins were seen at 24% in 2015.

Amazon Prime service gaining subscribers

Prime subscriptions grew by 53% and 51% year-over-year in 2014 and 2015, respectively, with stronger growth across international markets than within the U.S. We suspect that Prime members could be around 55-60 million globally at the end of 2015. The subscription offers free shipping along with access to video content. This implies that streaming content is just positioned as one of the key features of the service to attract subscribers.

While the revenues earned from the Prime service subscriptions account for a small chunk of the company’s total sales, the margins from Prime customers are much higher than other customers. Additionally, according to various reports, Prime customers tend to buy almost twice as much as the regular customers. We believe Prime subscribers will continue to grow rapidly as Amazon is investing heavily in streaming content to lure in more buyers.

Explosive growth in the global e-commerce market

The global e-commerce market is growing rapidly as consumers continue to shift to Internet for their purchases. Much of this is being driven by growing Internet penetration, increasing adoption of Internet enabled devices such as tablets, notebooks and smartphones, and the continuing improvement in online payment systems. The global online retail market was valued at roughly $1,672 billion in 2015, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 15% over our forecast period to over $2,700 billion in the long-run.

Weak growth being seen in the media segment

Sales growth in the media segment was recorded at -3% in the first half of 2015 and 8% in the whole year. On the other hand, the worldwide sales of electronics and other general merchandise (EGM) and ‘Other’ category rose at much higher rates. We expect this trend to continue in the near-future.

Heavy investments on international expansion could add pressure on profitability

Amazon is making significant investments to expand its presence in regions such as China, India, Italy and Spain. While these investments will enhance revenue growth, however, this strategy could also raise margin pressure. Amazon will invest a couple of billion dollars on its Indian operations, but since the country’s e-commerce market is highly competitive, we believe it will be difficult for Amazon to attain profitability in the region for a couple of years atleast.

However, the recent acceleration of currency-neutral revenue growth in the international segment outperformed average market expectations during 2015. While the bottom-line could continue to remain challenging in the international region, we believe the top-line outlook in this market is strong.

How Does Trefis Modelling Work?

How do we get the historical numbers for this chart?

Trefis has a team of in-house Analysts who gather historical data from company filings and other verifiable sources. When historicals are available, we explain how we got them at the bottom of the Trefis analysis section below.

Who came up with the Trefis forecast for future years?

The Trefis team of in-house Analysts considers a variety of factors when projecting any forecast. The rationale for our projections is explained in the Trefis analysis section below.

How does my dragging the trendline on the chart impact the stock price?

1. We use forecasts for business drivers to calculate forecasted Revenues and Profits for each division of the company.
2. We then use forecasted Profits in a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model to obtain the Price Estimate for the company.

See more on: DCF Methodology

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