AMZN
The stock isn’t just rising — it’s moonwalking
Amazon shares ripped more than 5% Monday, helped by a friendlier mood across growth stocks and a little extra sparkle from Wall Street. If you’ve been waiting for the market to remember that Amazon is both a retail giant and a cloud beast, here we are.
BNP Paribas says the cloud story is still cooking
BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones kept an Outperform rating and raised his price target to $355 from $345 after Amazon’s stronger-than-expected second-quarter results. He pointed to better revenue and operating income, plus AWS momentum that keeps making the bear case look increasingly awkward.
Jones also flagged a few juicy details from management’s commentary:
- AWS backlog grew about 36% sequentially and more than 150% year over year to $496 billion
- Amazon lifted its fiscal 2026 capex outlook to $220 billion from $200 billion
- The company sees AWS as a much bigger long-term opportunity than it did before, with AI helping support the case
Why investors care
That backlog number is the headline-grabber. It’s basically Amazon’s cloud pipeline stuffed so full it starts looking less like a backlog and more like a warehouse in holiday season mode. More backlog, more visibility, more confidence that AWS can keep pumping cash into the rest of the empire.
And because Amazon is a heavyweight in funds like FDN, FFOG, and KQQQ, a strong move in AMZN can trigger mechanical buying in those ETFs too. So yes, this is one of those days when Amazon being Amazon can quietly pull a few other boats with it.
Big picture: the market may be cheering the stock move today, but Wall Street is really betting on the same thing it always does with Amazon — that the next act is even bigger than the last.