Amazon stock surged to fresh all-time highs last week, and the rally left the Amazon stock price up 26% over the past month as investors looked ahead to quarterly results due Wednesday, April 29. Rohit Kulkarni said sentiment was firmly bullish into the print, but he also warned that expectations had moved higher quickly.
Kulkarni kept his Buy rating on Amazon and set a $285 price target, even after the shares closed at $287.33 in the latest run-up. He said he remained constructive, with AWS acceleration and AI exposure driving the move, while the expanded partnership with Anthropic last week reinforced the view that Amazon is strengthening its position in the AI race.
The numbers behind that optimism were already large. Kulkarni expected first-quarter AWS growth of roughly 29% to 30% year over year, total revenue near $179 billion and operating income of about $22 billion to $23 billion. He said retail trends were still stable, with North America expected to grow around 10% to 11% and international markets in the mid-teens.
That is why the market is no longer focused only on whether Amazon beats the quarter it has already guided toward. Kulkarni said the stock’s next move is likely to be shaped more by AWS acceleration and second-quarter operating income guidance than by simple upside to first-quarter revenue or profit.
There is also a harder edge to the setup. Kulkarni said the risk skew was toward downward estimate revisions, and that kind of change has historically pressured the stock. Even so, the broader Wall Street view stayed positive: Amazon had 41 additional Buys and three Holds from other analysts, giving it a Strong Buy consensus rating.
For Amazon, the question after the record run is not whether investors like the story. They do. The issue now is whether the company can keep delivering enough cloud momentum and AI credibility to justify a market that has already moved fast and is expecting more.
