Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Advances on Robots, AI

With the holiday shopping season about to begin—except for those early birds who somehow already started—all eyes are turning to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) to lead the way. And there are signs that it will do just that, thanks to new developments in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Investors liked what they’ve heard so far, and Amazon was up over 3% at one point in Monday afternoon’s trading as a result.

First, Amazon’s purchase of iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) continues apace, as the European Union set a deadline of February to examine the deal. The review originally came with a deadline of November 15, but when August hit, the review was suspended altogether. But now it’s back on, and that should help give Amazon a little extra help. Meanwhile, Amazon is also looking to turn AI into an ad-boosting feature, drawing information from Amazon Prime subscribers to serve as a base to improve advertising. That’s good enough for some analysts, who believe that Amazon can put that data to work to improve holiday shopping sales. Given the current state of the U.S consumer, though, any port in that storm will be welcome.

All is not good news for Amazon, however. Leaving aside the potential for macroeconomic disasters, there’s a more immediate threat facing Amazon this year. Known as Make Amazon Pay, the plan is for Amazon workers in over 30 different countries to go on strike for Black Friday. The coalition behind the strikes staged a similar action last year, though it promised that this year would actually be bigger than last year’s effort.

Is Amazon Stock a Good Value?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 42 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average AMZN price target of $175.81 per share implies 33.72% upside potential.

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