Andy Jassy makes it clear giving up on Amazon’s stock would be an expensive mistake
Amazon ‘s stock performance hasn’t been much to write home about lately. But CEO Andy Jassy’s latest annual letter to shareholders strengthened our resolve to stick with it. The reason: Amazon is putting a ton of shots on goal, and the company’s track record suggests enough of them will find the back of the net, rewarding our patience once the profits start flowing. Wall Street agreed, at least on Thursday, with shares up 4.5%. While encouraging, the rally only brings the stock back to flat year to date. Amazon’s shots are coming from all over, including a massive AI computing expansion, faster and farther online deliveries, robots, and out-of-this-world internet service (literally). Jassy’s letter on Thursday covered them all. But they aren’t cheap — and that’s been a steady overhang on the stock, which has lagged behind the broader market and most of its “Magnificent Seven” peers over the past two years. “I think this [underperformance] is going to change,” Jim Cramer said during Thursday’s Morning Meeting. “It’s one of the best-run companies in the world. One day, it’s going to be up … as much as Alphabet.” Alphabet — the owner of Google, YouTube and robotaxi service Waymo — is another tech giant whose stock had stalled out, only to eventually get its momentum back last year once regulatory overhangs lifted and the strength of its eclectic businesses became too much to ignore, especially the capabilities of artificial intelligence model Gemini. Unfortunately, we pulled the plug too soon last spring and were forced to return to the stock at higher prices in December. It’s a mistake that Jim has said we’re intent to learn from, not just with Amazon but Microsoft , too. For Amazon, investors’ biggest worry right now is its plan to shell out $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, which Wall Street projects will lead to negative free cash flow (FCF) in 2026 to the tune of $11.47 billion, according to FactSet. To be clear, negative FCF means a company is spending more cash than its business is generating in a given period. Last year, Amazon’s free cash flow was still positive at $11.19 billion, down from $38.22 billion in 2024. Most of that capex spending is going toward AI data centers to support its Amazon Web Services cloud business. Jassy made a compelling defense of these spending plans in Thursday’s letter, reiterating that AWS is monetizing new compute capacity as “as fast as it’s installed.” “We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch,” wrote Jassy, who has been CEO since July 2021, taking over for founder Jeff Bezos. “Of the AWS capex we expect to spend in 2026, much of which will be monetized in 2027-2028, we already have customer commitments for a substantial portion of it,” Jassy added. Over the course of its three-decade history, Amazon has made bold bets to transform itself from an online book seller to the sprawling enterprise it is today — home to a global network of highly profitable data centers, a grocery store chain, a movie studio and a logistics network that, by at least one count , handled more packages last year than the U.S. Postal Service. Not every investment Amazon has made has worked, and Jassy acknowledged that the path to success is not linear. But in the case of all this AI spending, the CEO argued it is necessary. “We are willing to make large capex investments and endure short-term FCF headwinds for the substantial medium to long-term FCF surplus. AI is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where the current growth is unprecedented and the future growth even bigger,” Jassy wrote. “We’re not going to be conservative in how we play this — we’re investing to be the meaningful leader, and our future business, operating income, and FCF will be much larger because of it,” he added. AI is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where the current growth is unprecedented and the future growth even bigger. … We’re not going to be conservative in how we play this. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Jassy disclosed that its AI cloud business had a $15 billion annualized run rate in the first quarter of 2026, which seems to be the most specific figure the company has offered on the size of that business yet. For the year, the Street expects AWS to do almost $162 billion in total revenue. When discussing the other parts of Amazon’s businesses, Jassy highlighted its investments in robotics to improve the speed and lower the cost of e-commerce deliveries. He also made the case that Amazon’s efforts to grow its presence serving rural communities in America are worth the money — something we agree with because it makes a Prime membership more attractive. “Customer response has been overwhelmingly positive, with the average number of monthly Same-Day customers in rural areas nearly doubling in 2025 compared to the prior year,” he wrote. “Once this expansion is complete, our network will be able to deliver over a billion more packages each year to customers living in over 13,000 zip codes spanning 1,200,000 square miles.” Jassy emphasized how those investments dovetail with Amazon’s satellite internet ambitions, ahead of the planned mid-year launch of its Leo service to rival SpaceX’s Starlink. “There are billions of people on the planet who lack high-speed internet access, and millions of businesses, governments, and other organizations operating in places without reliable connectivity,” he wrote. However, building a network of low Earth orbit satellites costs a pretty penny, and the company has also faced questions about this spending in recent years . The way Jassy tells it, though, Amazon Leo ( formerly Project Kuiper ) has the chance to be a lucrative business for the company, benefiting both the e-commerce side of things and AWS. After all, people using the internet will require computing power from somewhere. The bottom line? Investors need to be patient with Amazon’s stock as these investments play out because the profits should eventually follow. Giving up on it here could be an expensive mistake. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AMZN, MSFT and GOOGL. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
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