Latest news with #stockprice
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy unleashed a meticulous 8-minute defense of AWS' standing in the AI arms race amid investor stock freakout
Amazon's stock price had already been dropping in after-hours trading on Thursday despite better-than-expected results when Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak prefaced his questions on an earnings call with a disclaimer that made it clear this wasn't going to be a 'Congrats on the quarter, guys' type of analyst—CEO interaction. 'I have two [questions] for you on AWS; they're a little tough but I'm going to throw them at you,' Nowak told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. 'There is a Wall Street finance person narrative right now that AWS is falling behind in Gen AI with concerns about share loss to peers. What is your rebuttal to that and talk to us about your and the team's most important focal points just to ensure that AWS stays on the knife's edge of innovation versus hyperscaler peers?' Nowak also pressed Jassy on why it wouldn't be fair to assume that AWS' revenue growth shouldn't accelerate in the back half of the year given all of AWS' generative AI offerings and widespread demand from companies of all sizes to cash in on this transformational technology. Jassy responded by stressing that this is the early stages of a technological transformation that will extend far into the future. While some of the top frontier model providers do use AWS in some capacity, non-AI AWS customers that are rushing to build generative and agentic AI services using AWS are 'quite early, and many of them are just smaller in terms of usage relative to some of those top heavy applications I mentioned earlier.' That is bound to change. So if you follow Jassy's thinking, as more enterprises figure out what they want to build and how they want to build it, they're going to start having different needs. For the largest model makers, like Open AI or Anthropic, Jassy foresees their costs shifting from a mix between training their models and the cost associated with 'inference,' or the customer-facing part where the model spits out a prediction, answer or action, to mostly inference expenses. And Jassy maintains AWS is positioned well for this transition because of the low-cost AI chip line Trainium. 'It's about 30% and 40% better price performance than the other GPU providers out there right now, and we're already working on our third version,' he said. For others, who want to use another company's model to create their own generative AI applications, Jassy argued that Amazon Bedrock, which offers models from a wide selection of companies, has become a go-to destination and 'is growing very substantially.' Jassy continued on the this-is-just-the-first-inning thread, by noting that companies are just starting to think about deploying AI agents and that, with its recent agentic AI announcements, AWS will be well-positioned to capitalize. The Amazon CEO, and former AWS chief, added that AWS cloud leadership position also provides some lock-in as AI 'inference' becomes just another component of a company's cloud services stack. '[P]eople are going to actually want to run those [AI] applications close to where their other applications are running, where their data is,' Jassy said. 'There's just so many more applications and data running in AWS than anywhere else.' As for Nowak's question about the possibility of AWS' growth rate accelerating in the back half of the year, Jassy wouldn't directly answer it but stressed his optimism, in part stemming from AWS customers starting to deploy more AI products at scale that should continue to ramp in coming quarters. Earlier in the call, Jassy had defended AWS' 18% revenue growth rate in light of Microsoft reporting 34% annual revenue growth for its Azure cloud unit and Alphabet recently reporting 32% quarterly growth for Google Cloud. Azure generates around 2/3 the revenue that AWS does, while Google Cloud registers less than half the annual revenue of Amazon's cloud behemoth. 'You look at the business, it's a $123 billion annual revenue run rate business and it's still early,' he said. 'How often do you have an opportunity that's $123 billion in annual revenue run rate where you say it's still early? It's a very unusual opportunity that we've very bullish about.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Robinhood Markets (HOOD) Reports Revenue Drop To US$682 Million For Q2 2025
Robinhood Markets recently reported a significant decline in both revenue and net income for the second quarter of 2025, reflecting ongoing challenges. Despite these financial setbacks, Robinhood's stock price surged 128% over the last quarter, a move that sharply contrasts with the flat performance of the broader market during the same period. Potential influences on this remarkable price movement include the company's strategic expansion into European cryptocurrency markets and inclusion in several indices, which may have enhanced investor sentiment. The robust performance of tech stocks, as evidenced by gains in major indices, could also have contributed indirectly to investor optimism surrounding Robinhood. Be aware that Robinhood Markets is showing 1 weakness in our investment analysis. Find companies with promising cash flow potential yet trading below their fair value. Robinhood Markets' recent expansion into European cryptocurrency markets and its inclusion in various indices have sparked substantial interest from investors, potentially contributing to the notable surge in its share price over the past quarter. Such market enthusiasm is likely intertwined with the company's broader narrative of expanding services into futures and international markets, which may enhance trading volumes and diversification. This strategic move could bolster projected revenue and earnings growth, despite current regulatory challenges and competitive pressures in the crypto sector. Over the longer-term, Robinhood's shares have achieved a very large total return of 929.10% over three years, contrasting sharply with its one-year performance relative to the US Capital Markets industry, which returned 35.3%. This stark difference underscores the volatility and growth potential inherent in Robinhood's business model. The current share price of US$106.10, when compared to the consensus price target of US$100.19, indicates a 5.57% premium, suggesting that the market's optimism may not align with analysts' projections. The future revenue and earnings forecasts could be positively affected by continued service expansion, yet challenges in realizing expected synergies and managing costs may impact these projections. It remains critical for investors to weigh the company's growth ambitions against potential regulatory and competitive risks that could alter its profitability trajectory. Understand Robinhood Markets' earnings outlook by examining our growth report. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include HOOD. This article was originally published by Simply Wall St. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Analysts revise Amazon stock-price targets ahead of Q2 earnings report
Analysts revise Amazon stock-price targets ahead of Q2 earnings report originally appeared on TheStreet. If you don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, look again. Washington state's largest city gets a lot of stormy weather, but one investment firm is seeing nothing but blue skies for Amazon () this week. 💵💰Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter 💰💵 The e-commerce and cloud-services giant is scheduled to report second-quarter results on July 31 after the closing bell, and Wedbush analysts are looking beyond the clouds in a research note entitled "Seattle Sunny Summer Skies." Investor sentiment is broadly positive, the investment firm said, with expectations improving in recent weeks following May's disappointing second-quarter guidance. Still, profitability forecasts for the year remain depressed as investors weigh the impact of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariff agenda. macroeconomic uncertainty, currency risk, rising expenses to support artificial-intelligence initiatives, and an uncertain cost trajectory associated with Project Kuiper, Amazon's satellite network. The company said that at Kennedy Space Center it recently opened a 100,000-square-foot payload-processing facility that prepares satellites for launch. Amazon CEO: No major price increases "We think the risk/reward is attractive, and we see opportunity for Amazon to deliver upside to current operating-income expectations," Wedbush said. The firm said it was focusing on Amazon's retail performance and consumer-demand trends; widening operating margins supported by a product-mix shift to wider-margin revenue; momentum within the Amazon Web Services cloud division, and emerging monetization of its AI efforts. More Tech Stocks: Analyst who correctly predicted Rocket Lab stock surge resets forecast Verizon Q2 earnings report surprises with remarks on tax reform Fund manager who forecast Nvidia stock rally reboots outlook Wedbush, which maintained its outperform rating on Amazon and boosted its price target to $250 from $235, said it was also monitoring capital-spending requirements to support infrastructure and AI investments, plus persistent growth within the advertising business. "We expect Amazon's [market-share] gains of e-commerce and total retail to continue, supported by faster shipping speeds and growing penetration in household essentials," the firm's analysts said. Wedbush said Amazon continued to increase market share in total retail, and the U.S. backdrop is favorable in Q2. Management in May said that the company had not seen any indication of softening demand in the core retail business. In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC's Jim Cramer that the tech giant hadn't seen significant price increases. "We did a lot of forward buying several months ago, and then a lot of our sellers, our third-party selling partners, forward deployed a lot of inventory to avoid some of the issues with the uncertainty around where tariffs are going to settle,' he said. Jassy said Amazon had about two million sellers in its marketplace. Even if some sellers pass on the costs of the Trump administration's tariffs to customers by raising prices, he said, many instead will 'take share and not increase prices.' Analyst: Data show better-than-expected quarter Jassy called generative AI 'the most transformative technology of our lifetime" and predicted that "many, perhaps most, consumers will have robots in the home sometime in the next 10 years or so.' Amazon shares are up 27% from a year ago and up about 5% investment firms also issued research notes ahead of Amazon's earnings. Stifel analyst Mark Kelley raised his price target on the company to $262 from $245 and affirmed a buy rating on the shares, according to The Fly. Heading into Q2 earnings for the investment firm's e-commerce and consumer app coverage, the analyst said third-party data suggest a better-than-expected quarter as the Trump administration has either struck more favorable deals or pushed out tariff implementation while waiting for deals. The investment firm was "too conservative in our models" after Trump's early-April tariff reveal, he said. Stifel has raised some other estimates within the sector. Wells Fargo raised its target on Amazon to $245 from $238 and maintained an equal weight rating. The firm estimated that the AI startup Anthropic should contribute about 1 percentage point of additional growth to AWS revenue in the second half compared with the first half, +2.4% vs. +1.3%. That supports the potential for stock outperformance in the second half of 2025, the firm said. Amazon has invested about $8 billion in Anthropic. Wells Fargo sees the 2026 contribution from Anthropic increasing to +3.1%, reinforcing the case for second-half growth to continue throughout 2026 as Anthropic inference revenue scales. Further, the firm sees inference as driving more than 75% of Anthropic's revenue contribution in 2026. And it sees AI's total contribution to AWS scaling to 10% in 2026 from less than 3% in revise Amazon stock-price targets ahead of Q2 earnings report first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 31, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 31, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Eyes Apple Card Portfolio and Partners with Coinbase
JPMorgan Chase has recently been in discussions to acquire Apple's credit card portfolio, which could significantly impact its financial services division. The company's stock saw a 21% increase over the last quarter, during which time it also initiated a strategic alliance with Coinbase, enhancing its offerings in the cryptocurrency space. These developments coincided with broader market trends, characterized by strong earnings from companies like Microsoft and Meta, which contributed to positive investor sentiment. Despite mixed earnings results, including a decline in net income, these strategic moves might have added weight to JPMorgan's substantial stock price gain. We've spotted 1 possible red flag for JPMorgan Chase you should be aware of. Outshine the giants: these 21 early-stage AI stocks could fund your retirement. The potential acquisition of Apple's credit card portfolio by JPMorgan Chase and its alliance with Coinbase could influence not only the company's share price but also its longer-term revenue and earnings forecasts. By diversifying into Apple's financial products and expanding cryptocurrency services, these moves may foster enhanced revenue streams within its financial services division. However, increased credit loss allowances and expenses from recent operations could temper future profitability predictions. JPMorgan's shares have exhibited a substantial total return of 252.49% over the past five years. This historical performance underscores significant investor confidence and reflects long-term growth, contrasting with the broader US Banks industry, which saw an 11.1% increase in earnings over the past year. In comparison, JPMorgan outperformed the market over the past year, with its 1-year return exceeding the US market return of 15.7% and the industry return of 22.1%. With a current share price of US$299.63, just shy of its consensus analyst price target of US$303.57, the price movement suggests market expectations align closely with analyst valuations. This proximity to the price target highlights the market's cautious optimism regarding the bank's potential profitability amidst external economic changes. Optimistic forecasts of cutting-edge tech investments and strategic partnerships might bolster the company's prospects, but elevated credit reserves and pending economic fluctuations could constrain revenue and earnings projections in the near future. In light of our recent valuation report, it seems possible that JPMorgan Chase is trading behind its estimated value. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include JPM. This article was originally published by Simply Wall St. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@ Sign in to access your portfolio
The Verge
18 hours ago
- Business
- The Verge
Microsoft becomes the second $4 trillion company
Microsoft's stock price has risen so much today that it has passed a $4 trillion market valuation for the first time in its 50-year history. The software maker is the second company to be valued at $4 trillion, after Nvidia reached a market cap of over $4 trillion earlier this month. Microsoft has reached this milestone thanks to better-than-expected earnings, and the company reporting its Azure revenue for the first time. Microsoft revealed last night that its Azure cloud computing business had generated more than $75 billion during its 2025 fiscal year, and the company's stock price immediately started soaring in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq. Microsoft's share price is up around 4 percent today, helping it maintain its $4 trillion market valuation. Microsoft has spent more than a decade building up its Azure cloud business, which is ahead of Google's in revenue but still second place to Amazon Web Services. Azure now touches every corner of Microsoft's businesses, including powering its AI projects, its Office software, parts of Windows, Xbox, and more. Microsoft's investment in cloud computing has positioned it well to take advantage of the computing needs for the future of AI, too. Earlier this year there were plenty of questions over the $100 billion investment into The Stargate Project, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was quick to defend the company's own $80 billion spend on cloud and AI data center projects. 'All I know is, I'm good for my $80 billion,' said Nadella at the time. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood revealed yesterday that Microsoft is now planning to spend $30 billion on its AI infrastructure investments in the next quarter. If Microsoft keeps up that level of spending then the company will total $120 billion or more on cloud and AI infrastructure over the next fiscal year. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Tom Warren Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Microsoft Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech
