Online retail giant Amazon (AMZN) has a remarkable talent for getting large quantities of goods where they need to be in rapid fashion. But that talent did not manifest out of thin air. No, it is the result of thousands of workers at Amazon’s warehouses and delivery operations that make it possible. And new reports say that it may have just been hit by a rather serious monkey wrench thrown into its works with the United States government’s new attempt to run off illegal immigrants. Despite this, investors rallied around their choice of shopping venues and raised share prices fractionally in Monday afternoon’s trading.
Elevate Your Investing Strategy:
- Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence.
- Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week.
One particular case focused on Frantzdy Jerome, originally from Haiti, who worked in an Ohio warehouse. Jerome had received kudos from Amazon several times; once in March, a supervisor called him out for his “…reliability, hard work and dedication to our team.” A second message just months later thanked Jerome for “…your flexibility and picking up the extra shifts.”
But two weeks later, Jerome’s work authorization was revoked, and his was not the only one. “Hundreds” of others reportedly lost jobs at that Ohio warehouse, for the same reason: they were only allowed to work here because of a Biden-era program that has itself been revoked. While the impact is hitting Amazon, Amazon is hardly alone in this, reports note. A range of businesses—from auto parts plants to warehouses and beyond—are all taking hits from this policy.
Alexa’s Online Push Gets Pushed Back
Meanwhile, Alexa is having some issues of its own. Four months ago, Amazon announced plans to bring out a web-based version of the Alexa virtual assistant to take on the likes of Grok and ChatGPT. But reports now suggest that bringing Alexa to the web proved a bigger challenge than expected, and now, Amazon needs more time to get the concept off the ground.
In fact, new reports from late June say that there will be no way Alexa.com goes live any sooner than July 31. With the date now a floor rather than a ceiling, we may not see Amazon’s attempt at landing a piece of the chatbot market before August, or even later. There were no specific reasons given for the deadline push, but the obvious does suggest itself: it is harder than you might think to engineer a chatbot.
Is Amazon a Good Long-Term Investment?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 44 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 16.76% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $250.95 per share implies 10.51% upside potential.
