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Wall Street’s still wearing the Amazon sunglasses
BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones took one look at Amazon’s first quarter and basically said, “Yep, pay up.” He raised his price target to $345 from $320 and kept an Outperform rating, pointing to a strong Q1 across AWS, retail, and ads.
Amazon’s numbers gave him plenty to work with: $181.5 billion in net sales, $37.6 billion from AWS, and a backlog that jumped 50% quarter over quarter to roughly $365 billion before the newly announced Anthropic deal was even included. That’s not just growth — that’s a company stuffing its pipeline like it’s loading a moving truck.
The AI boom is doing the heavy lifting
Jones’ core argument is simple: AI demand is translating into real cloud demand, and real cloud demand is translating into a much sturdier outlook. He also highlighted that Amazon’s second-quarter revenue guide of $194 billion to $199 billion came in above expectations, while operating income guidance sat in the neighborhood investors wanted to see.
A few nuggets that matter:
- AWS revenue beat estimates, which matters because cloud is still the margin machine
- Backlog growth suggests customers aren’t just dabbling; they’re signing up for more
- Amazon kept its full-year 2026 capex guidance at $200 billion, which means the spending spigot is still open
Why investors should care
This is the kind of upgrade that says the “AI infrastructure” trade still has legs, and Amazon is one of the biggest beneficiaries. Sure, the company is spending aggressively, but if the backlog keeps swelling, that spending starts to look less like a splurge and more like a down payment.
And yes, Amazon’s stock was already hanging near its 52-week high. But when a megacap can keep raising estimates while the market is busy fretting about rates, tariffs, and vibes, that’s the sort of setup bulls love to brag about later.
Big picture: Amazon’s not just riding the AI wave — it’s helping build the surfboard.