UPDATE: Credit Suisse Assumes Coverage on Amazon.com

Credit Suisse has published a research report on Amazon.com

that assumed coverage with an Outperform rating and raised the price target from $270 to $301. In the report, Credit Suisse wrote, "In our prior DCF-based valuation methodology, we had excluded the working capital benefit Amazon realizes from its negative cash conversion cycle out of our terminal value calculation. More specifically, (and using 2011 year-end numbers as an example) Amazon saw about 41 days of effective "float" as its days sales outstanding was 20 days, had 49 days of inventory, and had days payable of about 109 days. And this has historically accounted for anywhere from 16% to 42% of the company's free cash flow generation in any given year. Given that this is a structural benefit that Amazon derives from its business model, we have elected to add this back to our terminal value calculation in a manner that is consistent with the methodology we use with the rest of our sector." Amazon.com is currently trading down 0.32 percent from Tuesday's $250.96 closing price.