Shares of Amazon.com Inc. demonstrate strong investment attractiveness despite retail investors’ attention on the massive Prime Day sale, after the company’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), established its status as the primary driver of the tech giant’s high profitability.
Amazon shares currently look undervalued from a free cash flow perspective, having corrected by about 15% from their all-time high.
Current quarterly figures for AWS at $37.6 billion provided the cloud segment with a share of just 21% of Amazon’s total revenue, trailing the commerce divisions in North America ($104 billion) and the international market ($39.8 billion). However, due to its much higher profit margins, AWS generated 59% of the company’s total operating profit for the first quarter. The cloud business is also growing faster than retail — at a 28% annualized rate compared to 12% in North America and 19% internationally.
Amazon is successfully overcoming new digital transformation challenges thanks to record investments in AI infrastructure. This year, the company is directing a colossal $200 billion toward capital expenditures in data centers, while CEO Andy Jassy confirmed high preliminary demand for the new computing power, and Amazon’s proprietary AI chips are already showing triple-digit revenue growth rates.