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Amazon gets its most bullish Wall Street call yet: $1,400 price forecast

Key Points
  • Wells Fargo Securities started its price target for Amazon shares at $1,400, which is 49 percent above Tuesday's closing price and the highest out of 42 research shops.
  • The analyst wrote in a note to clients that Amazon is in the best position to use artificial intelligence and data analysis to dominate new industries.
Amazon gets its most bullish Wall Street call yet: $1,400 price forecast
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Amazon gets its most bullish Wall Street call yet: $1,400 price forecast

Amazon shares are faltering this month along with many of its large-cap technology company peers. But the pullback is a buying opportunity, according to one Wall Street firm.

Wells Fargo Securities began coverage of Amazon with an outperform rating on its shares and a price target of $1,400, which is 49 percent above Tuesday's closing price. It is also the highest target out of the 42 analysts who cover Amazon, according to FactSet.

Wells' analyst predicts the internet giant will be able to use artificial intelligence and data analysis to dominate new industries.

"Given a strong customer experience, scaled infrastructure investments, high user engagement, and lead within Cloud, we believe AMZN is among the best positioned to apply these neural network advances [artificial intelligence] across new verticals/industries," analyst Ken Sena wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. "We see this lead in data, coupled with the company's edge in compute efficiency, as increasingly feeding insights into supply chain, for its retail, video, and other efforts, and through AWS, for its partners."

Amazon shares have rallied 25 percent this year through Tuesday, compared with the market's 12 percent gain. But the stock is down 4 percent this month compared with the S&P 500's 1 percent gain.

Amazon Web Services has 46 percent of the "infrastructure-as-a-service" commercial cloud computing market. Sena noted that the research firm IDC estimates the total public cloud computing market will grow to more than $200 billion by 2020. He also predicts the company can gain market share in the apparel, over-the-counter medicine and grocery product categories, which represent another $130 billion of potential sales in the U.S.

The e-commerce giant operates on a so-called flywheel model in which low prices, repeat shoppers and a positive experience for buyers and sellers create a self-perpetuating cycle of growth. "We see Amazon's famous flywheel as spinning with increasingly impenetrable force, where customer experience, frequency, and data will only grow," he wrote.

Amazon shares are up 0.7 percent in the Wednesday premarket session after the report.

— CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this story.

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