Douglas Herrington Sells 6,362 Shares of Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) Stock

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) CEO Douglas Herrington sold 6,362 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, August 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $259.01, for a total value of $1,647,821.62. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 476,681 shares in the company, valued at approximately $123,465,145.81. The trade was a 1.32% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

Amazon.com Stock Performance

Shares of Amazon.com stock opened at $260.28 on Thursday. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.81 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.94, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.74 and a beta of 1.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a current ratio of 1.03 and a quick ratio of 0.87. The business has a 50-day moving average of $250.94 and a 200 day moving average of $239.94. Amazon.com, Inc. has a 12 month low of $196.00 and a 12 month high of $287.20.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 30th. The e-commerce giant reported $5.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.82 by $3.93. The company had revenue of $200.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $197.03 billion. Amazon.com had a net margin of 17.44% and a return on equity of 18.00%. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 19.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $1.68 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 8.05 earnings per share for the current year.

Key Amazon.com News

Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:

• Positive Sentiment: AWS expands its data-analytics offering. Amazon Web Services agreed to acquire DuckLabs, the team behind open-source DuckDB. The deal could strengthen AWS’s position in analytics and help attract developers and enterprise workloads, while DuckDB is expected to remain independent. Amazon DuckLabs acquisition
• Positive Sentiment: AI-related cloud demand remains a major catalyst. Amazon is reportedly negotiating with Moonshot AI to host its Kimi K3 model under a potential revenue-sharing arrangement. If completed, the agreement could add AI workloads to AWS, although U.S. scrutiny of Moonshot creates geopolitical and regulatory uncertainty. Reuters Moonshot AI article
• Positive Sentiment: Analysts and large investors remain optimistic. Citizens maintained a Market Outperform rating and a $315 price target, while several hedge funds and prominent investors, including Peter Thiel, David Tepper and Bill Ackman, have recently held or increased Amazon positions. These reports support the view that AMZN’s valuation and AWS growth remain attractive.
• Neutral Sentiment: Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk. The closure of the 21-year-old crowdsourcing platform on September 30 appears financially immaterial, but it signals continued portfolio streamlining as AI replaces some human-completed digital tasks. Mechanical Turk shutdown
• Negative Sentiment: AI spending is weighing on cash generation. AWS growth is reportedly accelerating, but infrastructure investment pushed trailing free cash flow backward by approximately $25.8 billion. Investors want evidence that massive data-center spending will translate into durable profits and improved cash flow. Amazon AWS free cash flow article
• Negative Sentiment: Executives sold more than $15 million of stock. CEO Andy Jassy, AWS CEO Matthew Garman, CFO Brian Olsavsky and other senior leaders reported sales. The trades were made under pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plans, reducing their significance, but the concentration of selling can still weigh on sentiment. Amazon insider selling article

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Amazon.com

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in AMZN. Trust Asset Management LLC raised its stake in Amazon.com by 3.3% during the 2nd quarter. Trust Asset Management LLC now owns 107,563 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 3,414 shares in the last quarter. TOP Private Wealth LLC. acquired a new position in Amazon.com in the second quarter valued at $29,000. Bard Associates Inc. purchased a new position in shares of Amazon.com during the second quarter worth about $32,000. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC purchased a new position in shares of Amazon.com during the second quarter worth about $33,000. Finally, MilWealth Group LLC increased its position in shares of Amazon.com by 79.0% during the fourth quarter. MilWealth Group LLC now owns 179 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $41,000 after purchasing an additional 79 shares in the last quarter. 72.20% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts have issued reports on AMZN shares. Barclays reiterated an “overweight” rating and set a $365.00 target price (up from $330.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a report on Friday, July 31st. Benchmark upped their price objective on Amazon.com from $370.00 to $400.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, July 31st. Stifel Nicolaus set a $319.00 price objective on Amazon.com and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. DZ Bank increased their price objective on Amazon.com from $295.00 to $320.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, May 4th. Finally, Zacks Research upgraded Amazon.com from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fifty-six have given a Buy rating and two have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $322.39.

Amazon.com Company Profile

Amazon.com, Inc is a diversified technology and retail company best known for its e-commerce marketplace and broad portfolio of consumer and enterprise services. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company launched as an online bookseller and expanded into a global retail platform that sells products directly to consumers and provides a marketplace for third-party sellers. Over time Amazon has grown beyond retail into areas including cloud computing, digital media, devices and logistics.

Key businesses and offerings include Amazon’s online marketplace and fulfillment services, the Amazon Prime membership program (which bundles expedited shipping with streaming and other benefits), Amazon Web Services (AWS) which supplies on-demand cloud computing and storage to businesses and public-sector customers, and a range of content and advertising services such as Prime Video and Amazon Advertising.