Evercore ISI’s Mark Mahaney is taking a closer look at Amazon . The tech giant moved up to the No. 3 spot on Evercore’s technology and internet top picks, trailing only Meta Platforms and Uber in the first and second position, respectively. Evercore’s price target of $150 implies about 29% upside for Amazon compared to Friday’s close. So far this year, shares are up about 36%. AMZN YTD mountain Amazon stock. Mahaney struck an optimistic tone on Amazon largely thanks to the potential growth of Amazon Web Services (AWS). The tech giant’s cloud unit’s revenue grew by roughly 16% in the first quarter, a slightly faster pace than anticipated by analysts. “Our view is that the 2nd derivative call on AWS is very likely to turn positive going into Q3, due in part to easing comps and in part to the later-innings stretch of the Cloud optimization cycle,” Mahaney said in a Sunday note. Over the long term, Mahaney added, Amazon’s ability to grow artificial intelligence projects and integration could help cloud services going into 2024. “We are particularly intrigued by the possibility that increased AI workloads will materially boost demand for Cloud compute and storage solutions, where AWS strongly leads the market,” he added. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
