Amazon (AMZN)

Amazon's stock price has recently been performing strongly at high levels. As of the close on May 20th, it was 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 was $37.6 billion, a 28% year-over-year increase, 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.
Marginal improvement in retail business
North American retail operating profit margin increased from 8.0% to 9.0%, representing an approximate $4 billion annualized incremental operating profit. Advertising business and regional fulfillment systems are key drivers behind the profit margin improvement.
Additionally, the company’s full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance is about $200 billion, raising concerns that recent free cash flow may be constrained. 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 (from 9.0%) to form a dual growth engine, or to adopt a cautious attitude toward the current price, which already incorporates a lot of 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