UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Reiterates Overweight Rating, Raises PT on Amazon.com

In a report published Friday, Piper Jaffray & Co. reiterated its Overweight rating on Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), and raised its price target from $260.00 to $297.00.

Piper Jaffray noted, “This week, Amazon announced that more items are now shipped through Prime than through Super Saver shipping. Using this as a starting point, we now believe that there are currently ~12m Prime users (up from ~10m at the end of 2011) and more importantly, we estimate that the average Prime user purchases ~6x as many items on Amazon than a typical Amazon customer (previous estimate 3x). This implies that growth in Prime subscriptions drives eCommerce marketshare gains faster than we had originally believed. The ability of Amazon Prime to drive marketshare gains gives us enough confidence in future sales growth to raise our price target to $297 from $260.”

Amazon.com closed on Thursday at $246.22.

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