Jim Cramer Says Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) Valuation is ‘Unusually High’

We recently published a list of Jim Cramer is Talking About 10 Falling Stocks Amid Latest Market Rotation. Since Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ranks 1st on the list, it deserves a deeper look.

Jim Cramer in a program last week tried to make sense of the decline in tech stocks, saying companies with the “best fundamentals” got “hammered once again.”

“I did not expect that to happen.”

Cramer said that sometimes it’s difficult to own the “winners.” The CNBC host said it’s important to understand the bear cases around stocks otherwise you will never know what “you are up against.”

Jim Cramer tried to find out whether the latest decline in top tech stocks was just a “periodic selloff” that presented an “opportunity.”

“When we get this kind of rotation, you never know whether these stocks are selling off because there’s something wrong or because they are up huge.”

Jim Cramer pointed to a caveat when it comes to holding winning stocks. When you have the losers, there are no profits, but when you own winners in your portfolio, you can see losses because people want to take some profits off the table, Cramer said.

The CNBC host said when top stocks go down, people holding those in their portfolios often end up thinking about whether they should also sell these stocks and if something has “changed.”

“From what I can tell you, nothing has changed about the stocks we are going talk about tonight. But it is true that the stocks are a heck of a lot more expensive than they were one year ago.”

In this program, we took a look at some top tech stocks that fell last week and explained the reasons they lost value according to Jim Cramer. We also discussed these companies’ fundamentals and hedge fund sentiment. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Is Jim Cramer Talking About Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) Falling Stock Amid Latest Market Rotation?

Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 302

Jim Cramer said in a latest program that people are selling Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) because it sells 40 times its earnings, which is “unusually high, even for Amazon.”

“It’s not a huge beneficiary from lower interest rates so people are fleeing from Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and buying cyclical plays.”

Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) continues to gain on the back of its AWS business which is set to benefit from the rise in AI spending. Mizuho recently cited a survey conducted by one of its partners which shows that AWS sales cycle is seeing acceleration. Mizuho analyst James Lee reiterated his Outperform rating on the stock and gave a $240 price target.  The survey shows that spending on AWS is expected to rise about 22% year over year in 2024, up from the previous estimate of 20%, as generative AI projects are seen at an “inflection point” with external models about six months away from commercial deployment.

Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) is one of the stocks Dan Ives of Wedbush thinks have the potential to grow based on the AI revolution.

Investment firm UBS in a latest report named Trainium and Inferentia as Amazon.com Inc’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) strengths in the AI Enabling layer to profit from the $1.16 trillion opportunity. Trainium is a machine learning (ML) chip that AWS purpose-built for deep learning (DL) training of 100B+ parameter models. Inferentia is an AI accelerator for deep learning (DL) and generative AI inference applications.

Amazon Web Services is another major factor that makes Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) well positioned in the Enabling layer of the AI value chain. However, UBS believes Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) doesn’t have any offering in the Intelligence layer of the AI value chain. The firm labeled “chatbot recommendations” as Amazon.com Inc’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) strength in the application layer of AI.

ClearBridge Sustainability Leaders Strategy stated the following regarding Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:

“Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) operates the world’s leading e-commerce marketplace and the largest public cloud platform and has a burgeoning advertising business. We expect to see sustained margin improvement as Amazon’s retail regionalization efforts are bearing fruit and as its advertising business continues to scale ahead of peers. We believe the profitability ramp is still in the early innings as the company turns its attention to improving costs. One area will be inbound shipping, where faster delivery times through reduced freight, miles and packaging can reduce waste. We also see generative AI tailwinds and infrastructure modernization driving re-acceleration in growth at AWS, further enhancing Amazon’s free cash flow compounding potential. In addition, following our early 2024 ESG engagements with Amazon (after multiyear engagements) we were positively inclined to see continued improvements in labor relations (health and safety metrics, benefits and wages), as well as in environmental stewardship (climate targets, reducing packaging materials, electric delivery trucks) and innovation (commitments to responsible AI and data privacy). One of the newly announced initiatives on the retail side is consolidating deliveries into fewer boxes, which reduces packaging.”

Overall, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ranks 1st on Insider Monkey’s list titled Jim Cramer is Talking About 10 Falling Stocks Amid Latest Market Rotation. While we acknowledge the potential of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMZN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: Analyst Sees a New $25 Billion “Opportunity” for NVIDIA and Jim Cramer is Recommending These Stocks.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.