On January 12, Bank of America Securities analyst Justin Post reiterated a Buy rating on Amazon.com Inc. stock, setting a price target of $303.00. The firm indicated that sentiment around Amazon's artificial intelligence prospects could see improvement by the year 2026.
This potential shift is linked to expected growth in AI capacity, recent leadership changes within Amazon Web Services, and increasing usage of the company's Rufus AI shopping assistant.
The analyst's report noted that Amazon's stock performance in 2025 lagged behind major indices. The stock rose only 5%, while the S&P 500 gained 16% and the Nasdaq increased by 20%.
Despite the underperformance, the company maintained its retail execution during the period, achieving modest market share gains and expanding its profit margins.
However, the report highlighted a deterioration in market sentiment regarding AWS's competitive positioning. This resulted in an estimated 15% year-over-year decline in the forward EV/EBITDA multiple for the cloud computing division.
Bank of America anticipates AWS growth will accelerate this year. Factors cited include the leadership changes, new capacity coming online, and the strong growth in Rufus usage.
"We believe AI sentiment could improve in 2026, with AWS growth likely to accelerate due to new capacity, recent AWS leadership changes that could drive change in AWS's AI positioning, and strong Rufus usage growth setting up an agentic retail future," the analyst's report stated. "For long-term investors, if Amazon's proprietary tech improves versus competitors, AWS's positioning as a lower-cost provider could become a meaningful advantage as enterprises focus on AI inference cost efficiency."