Jefferies analysts lifted their price target on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) to $225 from $190, citing positive commentary from their Amazon Day.
The investment bank hosted 8 industry experts and former Amazon employees, with whom they discussed the latest trends in the company’s key segments such as its core marketplace business, Amazon Prime, and cloud division.
For the latter, Jefferies’s cloud expert sees an optimistic outlook, noting a positive shift as multi-cloud strategies gain traction.
They highlight that improved budgets, the resumption of previously frozen projects, and a decrease in optimizations are contributing to a more favorable environment for cloud services. Despite AWS lagging behind Azure, particularly in AI capabilities, there's noticeable momentum building for Bedrock, according to their industry expert.
“Our expert is also seeing more companies flock towards multi-cloud adoption, largely a result of a need for capacity,” said analysts.
“Additionally, they highlighted that OCI is not doing anything better than the major cloud providers, but noted that they are being aggressive on pricing in an attempt to gain share,” they added.
Meanwhile, the firm’s Prime Video experts remain bullish on the streaming service’s potential to secure connected TV (CTV) advertising revenue, citing Amazon's extensive first-party data as a significant edge.
However, they also note the challenge of increasing user engagement to match that of competing streaming services.
“While AMZN's $11B Thursday Night Football programming helps draw in a weekly audience during football season, our expert believes it is possible that AMZN is losing up to $40M per game.”