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Amazon buying Whole Foods is so 2017; this year is all about acquiring Target for the tech heavyweight, according to a new note from a high-profile analyst.

“Seeing the value of the combination is easy,” Gene Munster, Loup Venture co-founder, wrote Monday in a prediction to clients. “Amazon believes the future of retail is a mix of mostly online and some offline. Target is the ideal offline partner for Amazon for two reasons, shared demographic and manageable but comprehensive store count.”

Amazon has been looking to beef up its physical presence as it takes on its retail rivals. Only 3 percent of the Seattle-based juggernaut’s revenue comes from in-person sales, according to a recent L.A. Times report.

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Walmart “dwarfs” Amazon when it comes to physical stores, according to Munster, with about 11,000 more brick-and-mortar outlets across the globe; adding Target would boost Amazon’s store count up to about 2,300.

And the siren song for Amazon to pursue Target? Moms, according to Munster.

Moms are a key part of Target’s demo, and they would seamlessly fits into Amazon’s uh, targeting (no pun intended), of female patriarchs in its own growth strategy. The online retailer has been focused on everything from kid-friendly content on Prime video to bringing Whole Foods into the fold last year.

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Munster also doesn’t see the Trump administration posing any antitrust threat to a potential deal even though the president has been critical of the Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) and even tweeted a suggestion that the U.S. Postal Service charge Amazon more for shipping its goods.

The analyst pegs a 15 percent premium on Target’s current stock price, which would make it a $41 billion deal. Shares of Target jumped more than 3.5 percent on Tuesday morning following the note.

6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post

The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”

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Chris Hughes - The New Republic

The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."

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Pierre Omidyar - The Intercept

The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”

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Peter Thiel

The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.

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Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook

OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.

Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.

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Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.

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