Piper Sandler Reaffirms Overweight Rating on Amazon Amid Focus on Cloud Computing

Piper Sandler has reaffirmed its Overweight rating for Amazon.com (AMZN) and set a price target of $320.00 per share, citing the company's consistent return on invested capital (ROIC). The firm noted that AMZN shows the most consistency in ROIC among major technology companies, with an average ROIC from 2018 to 2025 standing at approximately 17%.

However, Piper Sandler also highlighted that some of Amazon's competitors, Alphabet and Meta, are spending on building frontier models. In contrast, AMZN is focused on its AWS cloud computing business, with the company's capital spending concentrated in this area.

The firm pointed out that ROIC deterioration is most severe for Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta Platforms (META), down 27 percentage points and 26 percentage points respectively from 2024 to 2027. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy discussed the company's ROI framework and payback periods around capital expenditures during its second-quarter 2026 earnings call.

Additionally, Amazon Web Services has announced plans to acquire DuckLabs, the company behind the open-source analytical database DuckDB, which will enhance AWS's analytics capabilities. The acquisition is expected to make AWS's offerings faster and more cost-effective.