By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Now time for some of today’s trending tickers. We’re checking in on Amazon, Salesforce and Uber. Let’s start with shares of Amazon getting crushed today. Raymond James downgrading the company to outperform from strong buy, while also cutting its price target on Amazon from 275 down to 195. In other news, Wells Fargo saying that Amazon’s delayed some commitments around new data center leases. That’s something I was just talking about. We asked Stacy Rascon about it, and he said he doesn’t think that spending plans are going to change much this year. But you know, beyond that, we could see if if things change and what kind of effects as well with regard to Amazon, the tariffs are going to have.
00:43 Speaker B
Yeah, we’ll soon hear from those CEOs and CFOs about some of those reports. What what do they actually say, right? Um, on this Raymond James downgrade, I mean, on a scale of downgrades going from strong buy to outperform, I still really like it, just not as much is kind of the idea. I do think earnings could come under some pressure. You talk about tariffs on imports from China. They talk about investment intensity at the company. They do take the target to 195, which per Bloomberg, that is a street low. Your average target is more like 253.
01:30 Speaker A
Yeah, and by the way, when speaking of earnings, they are set to report on May 1st.
01:36 Speaker B
There you go.
01:37 Speaker A
So that’s when we will get that commentary that we’re looking forward to.
01:40 Speaker B
More insight on the way.
01:43 Speaker A
Salesforce in focus today. That’s after receiving both an upgrade and a downgrade from Wall Street analysts. Shares are falling as DA Davidson downgraded the stock to underperform from neutral, lowered the price target from 250 to 200. On the other side, Guggenheim raised its rating on the tech giant shares to neutral. Uh, DA Davidson, that would be the one and only Gil Luria, friend of the show, we like Gil. So he downgrades Mr. Benioff’s company to underperform, so equivalent of a sell. Neglecting its core business, he says, to pursue a premature AI opportunity. He says yes, he told his clients, Agent Force does make strategic sense, but betting the whole company on this effort may be at the expense of other, the other 98% of the company’s business. Also, I thought it was interesting, he did his checks like the good, responsible analyst that he is there. And Gil says he did his checks on Asian Force and said many of the customers do not have the appropriate data stack, nor do they have the confidence in their ROI, especially given the evolving price models.
03:15 Speaker B
Well, guess what? There’s another analyst who’s on the other side of this trade today. Um, that’s John Difuchi, another smart analyst over Guggenheim. Now, much like him being, you know, the other analyst on Amazon, we were discussing less bullish, but still bullish. This is not a pounding the table buy by any measure. Um, Difuchi is upgrading this to neutral from sell when it comes to Salesforce and removing the price target. They said the stock fell to their prior price target. And so basically the valuation now looks less unattractive, I guess. I won’t say it looks attractive, but it looks less unattractive here. And um, so now they’re saying that some of the changes that we’ve seen also in the dollar might be more positive for something like Salesforce.
04:38 Speaker B
I think I got to get them on here for a good old-fashioned, I guess sell versus neutral debate, although that’s not as, not as dramatic, but still those be two analysts.
04:51 Speaker A
Yeah, yeah, a little debate. And the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit today alleging that Uber, ride share and delivery giant, was charged consumers for its Uber One subscription service without their consent, as well as failing to deliver promised savings and made it difficult for users to cancel the service despite its cancel anytime promises. Now, this is interesting on a number of different fronts, right? I don’t, do you have Uber One?
05:26 Speaker B
I don’t.
05:27 Speaker A
I don’t have it either. At least not that I know of, but um, you know, this is something, this is sort of traditional FTC bread and butter, right? Saying that companies make it too hard for you to cancel a subscription, but this is another signal that the FTC is sort of business as usual in some respects, including a case like this.
06:00 Speaker B
Yeah, I mean, this administration continues to go after Right. big tech. Google, Meta, you got Uber. Uh, maybe not terribly surprising. I mean, Trump often did talk about, you know, how he used to say he liked little tech, didn’t love big tech, it sounded like. Uber, by the way, does have a statement out. They did tell Bloomberg, um, Uber One signup and cancellation process is clear, simple and follow the letter and spirit of the law, that Uber does not sign up or charge consumers without their consent. Cancellation can now be done anytime in the app and take most people 20 seconds or less. So they’re fighting back, it sounds like.
06:47 Speaker A
Yeah, sounds that way.