Amazon (AMZN)

Amazon's stock price has recently been performing strongly at high levels. As of May 20, it closed at approximately $265.01, up about 2.19% for the day. The current stock price is near the upper end of the 52-week range of $196.00 to $278.56.

Q1 2026 AWS revenue is $37.6 billion, a year-over-year increase of 28%, the fastest growth rate in the past 15 quarters, breaking previous discussions about cloud business slowdown. AI inference workloads are one of the drivers of this rapid growth, with deployments on Bedrock and Trainium continuously expanding the customer base.

Retail business margin improvement

North American retail operating profit margin increased from 8.0% to 9.0%, representing an approximate $4 billion annualized incremental operating profit. The push of advertising business and regional fulfillment systems are key drivers behind the margin expansion.

Additionally, the company’s full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance is about $200 billion, raising concerns that free cash flow may be constrained in the near term. JPMorgan maintains an overweight rating but slightly lowers the target price from $313 to $312. When the stock price is near historical highs, investors need to weigh—whether to bet on AWS re-accelerating combined with retail profit margin expansion for dual growth, or to adopt a cautious attitude towards the current price already factoring in substantial optimistic expectations.

Amazon AWS regains 28% high growth, retail profit margin continues to expand (9.0%→+), $200 billion capital expenditure suppresses short-term free cash flow, stock price at historical high