Amazon stock rose Wednesday after the tech giant offered updates for two key areas of its e-commerce operations: AI-powered devices and grocery delivery.
Seattle-based Amazon announced that it is now offering a private-label brand with a range of grocery items under $5, as it competes to win more price-conscious spenders from Walmart, Costco and others. The offering is a combination of Amazon's existing Amazon Fresh and Happy Belly brands, the company noted in a news release. The line includes more than 1,000 products that include dairy, meat and seafood.
Amazon has spent the past couple months rolling out a series of changes to its approach to groceries, a market where it trails Walmart's e-commerce operations. Amazon said in late August that it would begin offering same-day delivery of perishable items alongside standard customer orders. It also recently struck up a partnership with the chain Winn-Dixie to delivery groceries to customers in parts of Florida.
Meanwhile, Amazon on Tuesday announced a series of new Amazon Echo and Kindle e-reader products, each infused with a version of the company's Alexa+ generative AI assistant. The list of new products includes four updated Echo devices, each of which Amazon said has more processing power and sensing capabilities to help its Alexa+ bot. The company announced the products at an event in New York.
Amazon gave its Alexa assistant a long-anticipated generative AI makeover earlier this year.
Amazon Stock: Near 200-Day Moving Average
Amazon stock was ahead 1% at 221.90 in recent action on the stock market today. The past two months have been a slog for Amazon, with shares falling 2% overall in August and 4% in September. Overall, the stock is trading roughly flat for the year and is hovering just above Amazon's 200-day moving average. Amazon has not traded below that long-term investor support level since early May.
Amazon's performance this year is the worst among the Magnificent Seven stocks. Along with concerns about tariffs and retail, investors are also debating whether AI is disrupting Amazon's lead in the cloud-computing market.
Wall Street analysts remain bullish overall, however. Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley initiated coverage of Amazon stock on Tuesday with an outperform, or buy, rating and a price target of 300.
"We like Amazon on the expansion of AWS infrastructure — poised to benefit from the scaling AI inference opportunity — and on expanding retail margins, driven by improving efficiency and fast-growing advertising," Walmsley wrote.
