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Amazon analysts are eating up its ramped-up Prime shipping plans - even as the e-commerce giant's growth slows

Amazon analysts are eating up its ramped-up Prime shipping plans - even as the e-commerce giant's growth slows

JPMorgan: 'Potential to Accelerate Growth in 2Q, But At a Cost'

RBC Capital Markets: 'This IS Big News, if you believe in Shipping Elasticity, which we do'

Rating: Outperform

Price target: $2,300

Analysts led by Mark Mahaney were particularly bullish on Amazon's cutting its Prime free-shipping capabilities from two days to one day.

"This IS Big News, if you believe in Shipping Elasticity, which we do," they wrote, adding "could be a key growth catalyst for Amazon for some time."

Susquehanna: 'Strength Continues'

Rating: Positive

Price target: $2,250

"We remain Positive on Amazon as we see the company as a long-term secular grower with leadership positions in three large growth markets — e-commerce, cloud, and advertising," analysts led by Shyam Patil wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

The analysts were encouraged by Amazon's sales outlook, and said that while delivery investments are expected to make 2019 "more of an investment year," the long-term growth picture is intact.

Future catalysts for the stock include "intra-quarter e-commerce data, company-specific events (such as the AWS summits), AWS product announcements, pricing decisions, and quarterly results."

Goldman Sachs: 'Revenue growth decelerates as margins hit record high'

Rating: Buy

Price target: $2,400 (upped from $2,100)

"We continue to believe AMZN represents the best risk/reward in Internet given the relatively early-stage shift of workloads to the cloud, the transition of traditional retail online, and share gains in its advertising business, the long-term benefits of each we believe the market continues to underestimate for Amazon," Heath Terry wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

Citi: '1Q19 Report Good But Not Great'

Rating: Buy

Price target: $2,200 (upped from $2,000)

"At a high level Amazon's 1Q19 results were good but not great," analysts led by Mark May wrote in a note to clients late on Thursday. "Revenue was at the high end of the guidance range but slightly below (1%) forecasts."

While revenue grew 17% in one quarter, that pace fell below the 22% fourth-quarter growth and 23% third-quarter growth, excluding Whole Foods, they noted.

The firm cited other metrics' growth that slowed, including gross profit, core non-adjusted retail sales, and Amazon Web Services.

Still, the analysts believe operating margins were strong "in all segments."