Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) Stock Price Up 1.4% – What’s Next?

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s stock price was up 1.4% during trading on Wednesday . The company traded as high as $244.90 and last traded at $241.70. Approximately 52,426,293 shares were traded during mid-day trading, an increase of 3% from the average daily volume of 50,804,711 shares. The stock had previously closed at $238.34.

Trending Headlines about Amazon.com

Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:

• Positive Sentiment: AWS launched a $1 billion AI engineering unit to embed specialist engineers with customers, which could accelerate enterprise AI adoption and support cloud growth. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Prime Day sales reportedly reached a record $26.4 billion, signaling strong demand across Amazon’s retail and membership businesses. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: U.S. authorities lifted a ban on Anthropic’s top AI model, a potentially favorable development for Amazon’s AI-related cloud exposure. Article Title

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research analysts have weighed in on AMZN shares. Scotiabank reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and set a $325.00 target price (up from $275.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. KeyCorp boosted their price target on shares of Amazon.com from $325.00 to $330.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of Amazon.com from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. Evercore increased their price objective on shares of Amazon.com from $285.00 to $315.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus set a $319.00 target price on shares of Amazon.com and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, April 30th. Fifty-seven research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, Amazon.com has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $312.78.

Amazon.com Stock Performance

The firm has a market capitalization of $2.60 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.91, a PEG ratio of 1.80 and a beta of 1.44. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $255.10 and a 200-day moving average price of $234.31. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27, a current ratio of 1.18 and a quick ratio of 1.01.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, April 29th. The e-commerce giant reported $2.78 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.63 by $1.15. Amazon.com had a return on equity of 19.92% and a net margin of 12.22%.The firm had revenue of $181.52 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $177.28 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.59 EPS. Amazon.com’s revenue for the quarter was up 16.6% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 7.71 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CEO Andrew R. Jassy sold 31,352 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $275.00, for a total transaction of $8,621,800.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,175,766 shares in the company, valued at approximately $598,335,650. This represents a 1.42% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Douglas J. Herrington sold 27,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $275.00, for a total transaction of $7,562,500.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 471,361 shares in the company, valued at approximately $129,624,275. This trade represents a 5.51% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 194,774 shares of company stock valued at $51,403,934. Corporate insiders own 8.90% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Compagnie Lombard Odier SCmA acquired a new stake in Amazon.com in the 3rd quarter worth about $451,642,000. Narwhal Capital Management raised its holdings in shares of Amazon.com by 2.3% during the fourth quarter. Narwhal Capital Management now owns 216,606 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $49,997,000 after acquiring an additional 4,854 shares during the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership lifted its position in shares of Amazon.com by 21.0% in the fourth quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 24,653,228 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $5,690,463,000 after acquiring an additional 4,275,942 shares in the last quarter. Weaver Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Amazon.com by 13.6% in the fourth quarter. Weaver Capital Management LLC now owns 39,264 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $9,063,000 after acquiring an additional 4,713 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Ethos Financial Group LLC boosted its stake in shares of Amazon.com by 9.6% in the fourth quarter. Ethos Financial Group LLC now owns 36,485 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $8,421,000 after acquiring an additional 3,196 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 72.20% of the company’s stock.

Amazon.com Company Profile

Amazon.com, Inc is a diversified technology and retail company best known for its e-commerce marketplace and broad portfolio of consumer and enterprise services. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company launched as an online bookseller and expanded into a global retail platform that sells products directly to consumers and provides a marketplace for third-party sellers. Over time Amazon has grown beyond retail into areas including cloud computing, digital media, devices and logistics.

Key businesses and offerings include Amazon’s online marketplace and fulfillment services, the Amazon Prime membership program (which bundles expedited shipping with streaming and other benefits), Amazon Web Services (AWS) which supplies on-demand cloud computing and storage to businesses and public-sector customers, and a range of content and advertising services such as Prime Video and Amazon Advertising.