TSP Weekly Tech Stock Update—Dec 23, 2023
This Week: Amazon bulls, GenAI security, Alteryx to go private, GOOGL/TEAM/DDOG hit new 52-week highs, Apple readies Vision Pro, Braze added to TSP Watch List, Adobe abandons Figma deal and more.
Hello from Rob…
—Amazon (AMZN, $153.42) shares on Wednesday hit a new 52-week high of $155.63. The stock is currently up 20% since late October, when I wrote about Q3 stabilization in AWS growth.
This week, Needham named Amazon one of its top large-cap picks for 2024. Raising its price target to $175 from $160, the firm said Amazon is strategically pivoting away from being a consumer-facing company into becoming an indispensable B2B backbone vendor for logistics and cloud.
Raymond James set an Amazon price target of $185, saying it sees improving AWS trends following several quarters of optimization headwinds. It also called out growing AWS generative AI stack adoption. Citi is even more bullish on Amazon, upping its target to $210 from $177. The firm thinks Amazon is better-positioned going into 2024 than into 2023, with many customers having already gone through cost reductions and optimizations.
JP Morgan is projecting 2024 AWS growth of 17%. For next year, the firm looks for AWS customers to shift their focus to new workloads (including generative AI-based) versus this year’s emphasis on cloud cost optimizations. It helps that AWS in 2024 will face easing comps. In Q3, AWS revenue grew just 12%. JP Morgan’s forecast represents a clear re-acceleration in cloud demand. Piper Sandler also thinks AWS spend is set to reaccelerate, with data from its recent 2024 CIO Survey giving it greater confidence in its outlook.
*Inside This Issue: Generative AI security will be an emerging growth driver for select cybersecurity companies in 2024.
—Paid subscribers will receive the January 2024 PDF of Tech-Stock Prospector (TSP #263) via email on Tuesday, January 9.
—Paid subscribers have access to the TSP Market Overview and TSP Portfolio Updates sections inside this issue.