Monday, July 17, 2017

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Amazon (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA) and Visa (V). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>

Amazon’s shares have outperformed the broader market in the year-to-date period (the stock is up +33.6% vs. the +10% gain for the S&P 500 as a whole). The Zacks analyst likes the company’s solid loyalty system in Prime and its FBA strategy, and content addition continues to add selection to Prime memberships.

Amazon recently announced that its Prime Day ’17 was a massive hit, with sales surpassing that of last year’s Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Also, Amazon Web Services (AWS) generates much higher margins than retail, so it has a very positive impact on Amazon’s profitability. Devices and IoT is also a potential growth area. However, Prime saturation in the U.S. market and competition in online retail remains concern.

(You can read the full research report on Amazon here >>>).

Shares of Strong Buy-rated Alibaba have outperformed the broader market as well as the peer e-commerce space over the last year (it is up more than +83.7%), with the trend expected to remain in place given continued growth in its core e-commerce business and growing cloud computing services.

The Zacks analyst likes the company’s dominance in China's mobile commerce market, efforts to develop new products, international growth opportunities, strong financial position and growing cloud computing services. On the flip side, the need for continued infrastructure investments, growing competition and increasing competition from Tencent Holdings and Baidu remain major overhangs.

(You can read the full research report on Alibaba here >>>).

Buy-rated Visa’s shares have outperformed the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry as well as MasterCard in the year-to-date period (Visa is up +24.4% vs. +23.2% gain for MA and +20.1% for the industry). Driving this momentum is the acknowledgement that Visa's brand, global network, and leading market share position it to be a key beneficiary of the secular global shift to electronic transactions.

Initial concerns about a changing competitive landscape, large on account of new payment options, have also started receding. The company's strong results in recent quarters reflect this favorable backdrop. On the flip side, forex volatility, increased client incentives and global economic uncertainty are some of the headwinds.

 (You can read the full research report on Visa here >>>).

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Alphabet (GOOGL), Infosys (INFY) and Sprint (S).

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Mark Vickery

Senior Editor

Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>