Piper Jaffray Highlights Amazon As Top Share Gainer For Holidays

With the holiday shopping season quickly approaching, Piper Jaffray is revisiting big-picture themes within eCommerce. It expects eCommerce sales to grow 15% in the 2010 holiday season after growing 11% in 2009. Total online retail sales grew 3% in the 2009 holiday season, according to comScore. Two big themes we expect from eCommerce this season: More deals earlier. It's less about Cyber Monday and more about the plethora of deals offered throughout the second half of November, and more free shipping. Piper highlights Amazon AMZN as the biggest beneficiary of a strong holiday season for online retailers and top stock pick. Similar to prior years, Piper will get online retail sales data points on a weekly basis from comScore. While Piper and many people within the industry believe comScore data understates actual growth in online retail, it will be the most consistent, real-time indication of the strength of online retail sales throughout this holiday season. The table below shows historical online retail sales in the U.S. from January through October and over the 9-week holiday season compared to Amazon's Q4 North America sales growth; if Amazon maintains its recent pace of sales outperformance, Piper believes Q4 sales estimates will prove conservative. AMZN closed Friday at $165.68