According to a report published by StreetInsider.com, Italy’s antitrust regulator has imposed a fine of $1.28 billion on Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) for taking undue advantage of its dominant market position.
Shares of the company were trading 0.5% down, at the time of writing, in the early trading session on Thursday. (See Insiders’ Hot Stocks on TipRanks)
What Did the Regulator Say?
The regulator, Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), said that the E-commerce giant was hurting competitors by pushing for its own logistics service, FBA, to the sellers on its platform.
Amazon does this “to the detriment of the logistics services offered by competing operators, as well as to strengthen its own dominant position,” AGCM added.
Amazon’s Response
An Amazon spokesperson said, “Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) have multiple channels to sell their products both online and offline: Amazon is just one of those options. We constantly invest to support the growth of the 18,000 Italian SMBs that sell on Amazon, and we provide multiple tools to our sellers, including those who manage shipments themselves.”
Wall Street’s Take
Recently, UBS (UBS) analyst Kunal Madhukar initiated coverage on the stock with a Buy rating and a price target of $4,700 (33.4% upside potential).
The analyst is of the view that Amazon has “multiple levers” to drive margin growth.
Overall, the stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 30 unanimous Buys. The average Amazon.com price target of $4,120.83 implies 17% upside potential. Shares have gained 13.5% over the past year.
Website Traffic
TipRanks’ Website Traffic Tool, which uses data from SEMrush Holdings (SEMR), the world’s biggest website usage monitoring service, offers insight into Amazon’s performance.
According to the tool, compared to the previous year, the company’s website traffic registered a 26.5% fall in global visits in November. Moreover, the website traffic has decreased 5.1% year-to-date against the same period last year.
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