amazon amzn received several mentions tuesday from wall street analysts covering a range of topics the cautiously optimistic commentary about the initiatives management is taking to cut costs and bring investments to a level more in line with revenue dynamics and the slowing global economy increases our conviction that margin pressure should begin to abate still down about 40 year to date amazon shares have gained about 15 since last thursdays surge higher along with the broader market the stock had been on the skids since reporting just an ok quarter and weak guidance after the closing bell on oct 27 however with signs that amazon is about to address its bloated cost structure which was something sorely missing from last months release we hope the stock can continue on the road to recovery morgan stanleys take morgan stanley reiterated amazon as a top pick noting that the online retail and cloud giant along with alphabet googl are their preferred ways to play the megacap space with overweight buy ratings however analysts there remain cautious on meta platforms meta with an equalweight hold due to higher structural question marks about metas moats and current capital expenditure spending while including commentary on alphabet and meta from the note as a point of reference were mostly focusing on amazon despite their relatively bullish outlook on amazon they remain cautious due to elevated inflation high costs weakening consumer balance sheets and economic headwinds these concerns caused them to modestly reduce estimates on amazon as well as alphabet and meta morgan stanley left amazons price target at 140 per share which represents about 40 upside from mondays close the analysts are now modeling 5 growth in us ecommerce in 2023 down from 10 previously the analysts cut alphabet and metas price targets googls went to 120 per share from 125 room for a roughly 25 gain metas went to 100 from 105 about 12 below mondays close from a topdown view morgan stanley maintained that amazon remains strategically positioned to take market share in ecommerce and enterprise spend throughpost downturn from a bottomup view the analysts acknowledged that amazon along with other largecap tech names is finally taking its medicine in amazons case this refers to a broad costcutting review  and according to the new york times plans to lay off roughly 10000 employees as soon as this week based on midpoint estimated salary ranges the job cuts could reduce costs by about 275 billion a lot of money to be sure but remember that relatively speaking thats only about a 1 reduction of amazons global workforce of 154 million people earlier this month amazon expanded its hiring freeze to its entire corporate workforce moffettnathansons take moffettnathanson updated investors on their view of the broader ecommerce landscape saying they prefer marketshare gainers like amazon as the algorithm of the internet creates a selffulfilling prophecy for continued share loss once it starts of course that implies that share gainers will continue to gain before digging in the analysts there said they do not subscribe to the bear case of peak ecommerce penetration because online shopping is more convenient and often cheaper than shopping instore not to mention is more transparent given that comparing prices across websites is inherently easier than traveling from one physical store to the next speaking on share losers the analysts called out covid as a doubleedged sword as the pureplay names such as wayfair and chewy came out of it in a competitively worse position because the pandemic forced the legacy brickandmortar players they were taking business from to accelerate investments in ecommerce infrastructure amazon of course is far from a pureplay offering what may be the broadest inventory selection of any retailer in the world be they online or physical on its note moffettnathanson said that if an online retailer is going to sell commodity products they need fulfillment scale and speed two areas where amazon has overinvested in recent years and as a result is now in a position to grow into that capacity in reviewing what makes a great marketplace the analysts highlighted etsy  taking a favorable view of the online platform for handmade items success in aggregating a highly fragmented global market of 75 million artisans and creators under one umbrella however they called out amazons business model as the gold standard due to prime memberships driving customer loyalty and recurring purchases while keeping retention costs low moreover because amazons direct traffic rates are best in class they have some of the lowest ad spend of all their peers that direct traffic has also allowed the company to build out an advertising business that generates nearly 40 billion annually 95 billion alone in the third quarter looking forward moffettnathanson said profit beats and declining capital intensity are the formula for multiple expansion for three years amazon has experienced multiple compression as ebit earnings before interest and taxes estimates declined and capital intensity was greater than expected we believe we are at the end of the tunnel barclays take barclays believes amazon provides a favorable riskreward at current levels as retail operating margins improve in 2023 and amazon web services stabilizes regarding aws recall that customers have been pulling back on the cloud in an effort to better align costs with their own customer demand after all the most attractive thing about moving to the cloud is that it converts fixed costs to variable ones however the focus of the barclays note was on amazons india business with analysts calling out that both amazon and walmart owned flipkart were both growing their toplines in the low30 range as of march 2022 and around 20 to 25 heading into 2023 a solid rate of growth to be sure however even better they believe the pace of operating losses is improving amazon india is 44 of international retail revenue and 23 of international operating income losses according to barclays even more encouraging than whats going on in retail they also noted that aws growth in india has been accelerating nicely off a low base keep in mind that the profit margin profile of aws is leaps and bounds ahead of retail as of march aws india was generating 12 billion in sales growing at 65 annually on a foreign exchangeneutral basis the fastest rate since 2019 remember india is the secondmost populated country in the world just behind china and well ahead of the united states the clubs take taking all of these updates as a whole amazon remains something of a show me story following its most recent quarterly results while we wished we sold shares at a higher level hindsight is 2020 and at this point we think fundamentals are set to improve going forward as noted in our earnings analysis last month we believe that management is prepared to make the tough choices needed to lean out the operation and as profit margins are cleaned up on the back of costcutting initiatives free cash flow should significantly improve that in turn should lead to a higher stock price while we think current levels offer an attractive riskreward for longerterm investors due to improving fundamentals more patience will be required at the moment we prefer names where the spending is already more aligned with the operating environment and where the macroeconomic backdrop is more supportive moreover we tend not to like chasing large moves such as what weve recently a view consistent with our decision to trim shares of microsoft msft earlier this week jim cramers charitable trust is long amzn googl meta and msft 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 trusts 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