After Earnings, Is Amazon Stock a Buy, a Sell, or Fairly Valued?

With strong Q4 revenue, robust AWS growth, and an increased fair value estimate, here’s what we think of Amazon stock.

Dan Romanoff, CPA 14 February, 2025 | 10:06AM
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The Amazon SJC18 office building, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022, in East Palo Alto, Calif. (Kirby Lee via AP)

Amazon AMZN released its fourth-quarter earnings report on Feb. 6. Here’s Morningstar’s take on Amazon’s earnings and stock.

Key Morningstar Metrics for Amazon


What We Thought of Amazon’s Q4 Earnings

  • We’ve raised our fair value estimate for Amazon to $240 per share from $200 after the company reported strong fourth-quarter results. The firm’s first-quarter outlook was slightly better than we expected, despite including more than $2 billion of incremental currency pressure on revenue.
  • Capex continues to surge even higher than expected.
  • Retail demand trends have remained stable over the last seven quarters, with e-commerce performing reasonably well but still showing signs of consumer stress. Fourth-quarter revenue grew 10% year over year as reported to $187.8 billion, compared with the top end of guidance at $188.5 billion. Currency was a $700 million greater headwind than anticipated
  • The two key segments for long-term growth, AWS and advertising, expanded 19% and 18% year over year, respectively. Amazon’s advertising growth continues to perform in line with or better than its large internet peers, while AWS’ growth was strong. Like Azure, it is capacity-constrained, so investment will surge further in 2025.
  • Margins have been consistently stronger than anticipated over the past couple of years, and we think there is room for expansion as the multi-hub strategy and increased use of robotics continue to unlock efficiencies. Fourth-quarter profitability was impressive, with operating profit at $21.2 billion, compared with the high end of guidance at $20.0 billion. This resulted in an operating margin of 11.3%, compared with 7.8% a year ago.

Fair Value Estimate for Amazon

With its 3-star rating, we believe Amazon’s stock is fairly valued compared with our long-term fair value estimate of $240 per share, which implies a 2025 enterprise value/sales multiple of 4 times and a 2% free cash flow yield. Over the long term, we expect e-commerce to continue to take share from brick-and-mortar retailers. We further expect Amazon to gain share online. We believe that over the medium term, covid pulled forward some demand by changing consumer behavior and better penetrating some retail categories, such as groceries, pharmacy, and luxury goods, that previously had not gained as much traction online.

We think Prime subscriptions and the accompanying benefits (along with selection, price, and convenience) continue to drive the retail story. We also see international as being a longer-term opportunity within retail. We model total retail-related revenue growing at an 8% compound annual growth rate over the next five years.

Read more about Amazon’s fair value estimate.

Economic Moat Rating

We assign a wide moat rating to Amazon based on network effects, cost advantages, intangible assets, and switching costs. Amazon has been disrupting the traditional retail industry for more than two decades, while also emerging as the leading infrastructure-as-a-service provider via Amazon Web Services. This disruption has been embraced by consumers and has driven change across the entire industry, as traditional retailers have invested heavily in technology in order to keep pace. Covid-19 has accelerated change, and given the company’s technological prowess, massive scale, and relationship with consumers, we think Amazon has widened its lead, which we believe will result in economic returns well in excess of its cost of capital for years to come.

Read more about Amazon’s economic moat.

Financial Strength

We believe Amazon is financially sound. Revenue is growing rapidly, margins are expanding, the company has unrivaled scale, and the balance sheet is in great shape. In our view, the marketplace will remain attractive to third-party sellers, as Prime continues to tightly weave consumers to Amazon. We also see AWS and advertising driving overall corporate growth and continued margin expansion.

As of Dec. 31, 2024, Amazon had $101.2 billion in cash and marketable securities, offset by $52.6 billion in debt. We also expect free cash flow generation—which suffered during the pandemic as the company invested heavily in facility expansion, content creation, and its transportation network—to return to normal levels over the next couple of years.

Read more about Amazon’s financial strength.

Risk and Uncertainty

We assign Amazon an Uncertainty Rating of Medium. The firm must protect its leading online retailing position, which can be challenging as consumer preferences change, especially since covid-19 (as consumers may revert to prior behaviors), and as traditional retailers bolster their online presence. Maintaining an e-commerce edge has pushed the company to invest in nontraditional areas, such as producing content for Prime Video and building its own transportation network. Similarly, the company must also maintain an attractive value proposition for its third-party sellers. Some of these investment areas have raised investor questions in the past, and we expect management to continue to invest according to its strategy, despite periodic margin pressure from increased spending.

Read more about Amazon’s risk and uncertainty.

AMZN Bulls Say

  • Amazon is the clear leader in e-commerce and enjoys unrivaled scale to continue to invest in growth opportunities and drive the very best customer experience.
  • High-margin advertising and AWS are growing faster than the corporate average, which should continue to boost profitability over the next several years.
  • Amazon Prime memberships help attract and retain customers who spend more with Amazon. This reinforces a powerful network effect while bringing in recurring and high-margin revenue.

AMZN Bears Say

  • Regulatory concerns are rising for large technology firms, including Amazon. Further, the firm may face increasing regulatory and compliance issues as it expands internationally.
  • New investments—notably in fulfillment, delivery, and AWS—should dampen free cash flow growth. Also, Amazon’s penetration into some countries might be harder than in the United States because of inferior logistical networks.
  • Amazon may not be as successful in penetrating new retail categories, such as luxury goods, because of consumer preferences and an improved e-commerce experience from larger retailers.

This article was compiled by Gautami Thombare.


The author or authors do not own shares in any securities mentioned in this article. Find out about Morningstar's editorial policies.

The information contained within is for educational and informational purposes ONLY. It is not intended nor should it be considered an invitation or inducement to buy or sell a security or securities noted within nor should it be viewed as a communication intended to persuade or incite you to buy or sell security or securities noted within. Any commentary provided is the opinion of the author and should not be considered a personalised recommendation. The information contained within should not be a person's sole basis for making an investment decision. Please contact your financial professional before making an investment decision.

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About Author

Dan Romanoff, CPA  is an equity research analyst on the technology, media, and telecommunications team for Morningstar in Chicago.

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