At 21x earnings, Amazon is cheaper than Walmart and surging

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At 21x earnings, Amazon is cheaper than Walmart and surging Harry Jones Fri, November 13, 2026 at 2:30 AM EST 5 min read AMZN +0.73% WMT +0.59% NVDA -4.39% META -0.60% MSFT -0.86% Investing.com and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Investing.com — Big Tech has spent the past month under the cosh as investors punish multi-billion-dollar artificial intelligence infrastructure budgets, sending NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) down 23.2%, 15.4%, and 3.7%, respectively, over the past 30 days. Yet Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)—the e-commerce and cloud giant at the center of the Anthropic boom—has pulled away from the group, gaining 10.74% since November 1 to trade near $266.17. The market is pricing Amazon's spending like its peers' speculative budgets, and the backlog says that is the wrong comparison. Yet Amazon is building against contracted demand: Amazon Web Services (AWS) carries a $578 billion backlog, and Anthropic has committed at least $110 billion in cloud spend with Amazon through 2036. At 21.4 times trailing earnings, the market still values that franchise below legacy brick-and-mortar retailers Walmart (45.2x) and Costco (52.2x). Spotting when contracted AI demand gets sold off alongside speculative spending is what ProPicks AI is built for. In Dominate the Dow, InvestingPro's strategy dedicated to top-tier market leaders, Amazon is held alongside cash-generative blue chips insulated from tech capex swings—including a commercial oncology leader, an industrial power equipment titan, and an essential national telecom carrier. See the cash-generative blue chips held alongside Amazon: Explore the Dominate the Dow strategy on InvestingPro That profitability converts into heavy operating cash flow, which reached $168.3 billion over the last twelve months. Amazon is reinvesting all of it, and more, into capacity. Third-quarter capital expenditures totaled $75.9 billion, full-year 2026 spending is set at roughly $220 billion, and management has guided to higher spending in 2027. The company pays no dividend, and the buildout has pushed free cash flow into negative territory. Wall Street has stayed firmly bullish through the post-earnings volatility. Shares tumbled about 10.1% after third-quarter EPS of $1.89 missed the $1.96 consensus, yet nearly every broker that updated after the report reiterated a Buy—including Goldman Sachs at $370 and BMO Capital at $390—with DA Davidson the lone Hold at $250. Analysts maintain a median price target of $326.99, with a high of $405 and a low of $230. InvestingPro's Fair Value models—which aggregate multiple discounted cash flow approaches—place intrinsic value at $290.88 per share, 9.28% above the current price and more conservative than the Street's $326.99 median. The multiple has compressed sharply as earnings scaled, with the forward P/E falling from 78.2 times in fiscal 2023 to 20.6 times for fiscal 2026, while a PEG ratio of 0.29 puts the growth on offer at a steep discount. Beyond the operating business, Amazon's stake in Anthropic would be worth about $271.8 billion if the IPO prices at the top of its $78-per-share range. The primary risk is the spending itself. The capex program has turned free cash flow negative and lifted total debt to $304.8 billion from $178.5 billion at the end of 2025, while CFO Brian Olsavsky has warned that AI workload mix and memory costs will cause AWS margins to fluctuate. A federal antitrust trial set for March 2027 adds regulatory overhang. Big Tech's AI budgets will keep drawing scrutiny, but Amazon has shown that its spending is backed by signed customer commitments and an accelerating cloud business. Its next test is turning that capacity into free cash flow once the buildout peaks. Relying on a single mega-cap while AI infrastructure budgets face investor scrutiny leaves capital exposed to one company's spending cycle. Rather than attempting to guess which tech giant will survive the next guidance reset, InvestingPro's data-driven strategies evaluate thousands of balance sheets every month to isolate companies converting structural demand into verified cash flow. For investors seeking high-conviction ideas in the active November lineup, full access to all ProPicks AI strategies costs just $9 a month. Explore all ProPicks AI strategies on InvestingPro Right now, Yahoo Finance users get a special of over 60% off InvestingPro Disclosure: The author holds no position in the stocks mentioned. Data and financial metrics as of November 12, 2026. At 21x earnings, Amazon is cheaper than Walmart and surging Asia stocks fall as tech recovery loses steam amid Nvidia leadership shock U.S. stock futures turn lower as tech recovery falters amid Nvidia CEO scandal

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