2025 is set to be a big year for online retail giant Amazon (AMZN), and not for the obvious reasons. Sure, many will still shop here, and watch video here, among other things. But this is the year its Zoox robotaxi unit looks to take off. That potential sent shares up nearly 2% in Friday afternoon’s trading.
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This looks to be the year in which Zoox goes commercial, and a report from CNBC noted that it will be offering rides “quite soon.” Moreover, it even has an initial target in mind for its launch: Las Vegas. And given Las Vegas’ reputation for excess, the idea of having an easy way to get from bar or nightclub to hotel that all but eliminates the notion of drunk driving sounds like a good plan. Afterward, San Francisco is next on the roster, with plans to get Zoox service to “most of the major cities in the U.S.” before the dawn of 2030.
The launch will be gradual, certainly; Zoox will start out with an “Early Rider Program,” the reports noted, before going live later in the year. It will also have to ramp up its total number of available vehicles, going from the “couple dozen” it currently has to quite a bit more than that. And with plans to hit the “major cities” within five years, it would be overstating things to look for it in your neck of the woods any time soon.
Buying TikTok?
Meanwhile, CNBC also rolled out an unexpected report that suggested that Amazon would make a good “dark horse” candidate to buy TikTok, now that it is within days of being shut down. Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak advanced the notion in an analyst note, suggesting that TikTok’s huge pile of content could readily become “…a viable social shopping network.”
That would make it an excellent fit for Amazon, who already sells the material, so why not pair it with a huge influencer platform with literally billions—32 of them at last report—of hours of consumer engagement? But this is not the first we have heard of such things; other reports suggest that X’s Elon Musk is eager to get in on the action himself, and use TikTok to augment X into a social media juggernaut.
Is Amazon a Good Long-Term Investment?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 48 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 46.42% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $251.35 per share implies 11.81% upside potential.
