Bank of America analysts keep Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in the Buy camp with a $310 price objective as investors weigh a Prime Day sales pull-forward against fresh pricing power in Amazon Web Services.
In a note released Monday, the firm sees the combination of stronger June retail data and a 20% price increase on select AWS GPU workloads as setting up a cleaner second-half growth story for the stock.
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Prime Day Delivers
Adobe Analytics data show U.S. online retail spend during the Prime Day window at roughly $26.4 billion, up 9% year over year, a result that lines up with Bank of America’s expectation for mid-single-digit global GMV growth as some international events move into the third quarter.
Discounts were broadly similar to last year, but Numerator data flagged an 11% drop in average order value on Amazon and softer satisfaction scores, pointing to a customer shift toward everyday essentials and grocery rather than big-ticket items.
Even with smaller baskets, BofA still expects Amazon’s North America retail segment to slightly beat Street estimates for about 14% year-over-year growth.
The catch for near-term traders is timing. Bank of America estimates around $7 billion to $8 billion of sales likely shifted into the second quarter from the third quarter due to this year’s Prime Day schedule, creating potential noise around Amazon’s Q3 outlook even if full-year fundamentals remain intact.
AWS Price Hike
On the cloud side, Amazon quietly announced a roughly 20% price increase effective July 1 for EC2 Capacity Blocks tied to GPU-heavy machine-learning workloads, following a prior 15% hike in January.
Bank of America’s work suggests effective prices paid by customers have already risen from 2022 trough levels, and the new adjustment should add an estimated 1–2 percentage points to second-half AWS growth.
Beyond core capacity, the firm points to ramping commitments from OpenAI and Anthropic on AWS infrastructure, reinforcing a view that Amazon is leaning into AI demand with greater pricing discipline.
BofA flags some risks including tougher competition from offline and local retailers, cloud share battles in advanced AI and heavy AWS investment that could pressure margins if macro conditions soften.
Still, with solid Prime Day demand and AWS asserting pricing power in AI workloads, Amazon’s stock remains a key name to watch as the market balances short-term guidance noise against a strengthening multi-year thesis.
AMZN Stock Price Activity: Amazon stock was down 0.86% at $238.07 at the time of publication Tuesday, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Over the past month, AMZN has declined about 10.6% versus a 1.6% decline in the S&P 500 and is up roughly 3% year-to-date compared to the index’s 8.4% gain.
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