Topeka Discusses Thanksgiving Sales, Twitter, Oil & Amazon.com

Topeka released a note on Friday discussing online sales and the impact of oil prices.

Analyst Victor Anthony noted that ChannelAdvisor reported online sales grew 20.1 percent year-over-year on Thanksgiving, with Amazon sales up 25.9 percent, eBay up 3 percent, Google PLA up 21.1 percent and traditional search up 26.5 percent.

The analyst note mentioned that Twitter Inc TWTR "has been on the move with product updates since the Analyst Day [with] Twitter Offers [which] allow merchants/advertisers to create card-linked promotions that they can share directly with Twitter users.

"Customers link the offers to their credit/debit cards and redeem the offer at the store, done automatically at checkout. This is a perfect way for advertisers to track in-store sales from their online campaigns. The ability to track in-store sales from an online ad buy, in our view, will be the holy grail that will get large brand advertisers to shift a more significant share of their ad budgets to the online.”

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN's “gross margins," meanwhile, "should benefit from the retrenchment In the price of oil. We believe the recent collapse in the price of oil will be a positive for Amazon's gross margins due lower transport/shipping costs.

"The caveat is any potential hedges entered into previously that would reduce the impact. We understand that OPEC doesn't meet again until June of 2015 and thus oil prices are likely to remain subdued until then," the note added.

Amazon.com, Inc. closed Friday at $338.64, up 1.52 percent.

Twitter Inc closed Friday at $41.74. up 1.48 percent.