Evercore hike lifts Amazon shares 4%

Amazon shares rose 4% on Friday after Evercore ISI raised its price target to $355 from $315 and maintained an Outperform rating. Evercore cited improving trends across Amazon’s retail, artificial intelligence and cloud businesses, drawing on results from its 14th Annual US Online Retail survey and stronger AWS performance.

Evercore’s survey found that 57% of Alexa AI users had bought a product they were previously unaware of, a result the firm said supports expanded retail sales from agentic AI. The survey recorded Amazon with 92% penetration, down from a 95% peak last year but 34 percentage points ahead of Walmart. Same-day delivery usage recovered to 49% of respondents. Prime customers who used same-day delivery spent 3.1 times more than non-Prime customers, the largest gap the survey has measured. About 46% of respondents who saw Amazon’s Perishable Checkout feature added fresh groceries to their carts.

Evercore derived the $355 price target by applying a 30-times multiple to its 2028 price-to-earnings estimate and kept Amazon as a top large-cap holding. On Wall Street, 22 analysts have recently revised earnings estimates higher, and the consensus price target implies roughly 27% upside from recent levels. Citizens retained a Market Outperform rating, citing logistics strengths and AI model growth, while Rosenblatt Securities began coverage with a Buy rating and a $335 target.

Financial results and company data highlight AWS as a major profit driver. The cloud division accounted for about 60% of Amazon’s operating income, and AWS operating income rose 64% year over year in the second quarter.

Operational moves include long-term agreements to buy power from four wind farms in Sweden developed by Eolus AB and OX2 AB, projects expected to add nearly 200 megawatts and bring Amazon close to 1 gigawatt of power capacity in Sweden once fully operational. Amazon also plans to add another 2 million Nvidia graphics processing units in 2027 and 2028, on top of 1 million GPUs it said would begin installation this year. Separately, AWS announced plans to acquire DuckLabs, the team behind the open-source DuckDB analytics engine.

Investors responded to the mix of survey indicators, analyst upgrades and operational investments by pushing the stock higher on Friday. Analysts will monitor upcoming quarters for continued retail and AI adoption, further AWS revenue gains and progress on the company’s infrastructure and power commitments.