Drone delivery is one of the holy grails of retail. The ability to get products to people’s houses at high speeds, such that they don’t even have to leave the house, is a winner by every standard. Online retail giant Amazon (AMZN) has been working on that point for some time now, and it is now set to try it out in the United Kingdom.
Amazon is taking its drone show on the road, working with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the UK to start experiments on drone flights that are out of the line of sight of drone operators. This has long been a sticking point for U.S. drone deliveries, which have become operational only recently in College Station, Texas, and Lockeford, California, for packages weighing five pounds or less.
The UK drone flights are set to use a range of tools to make them safer, starting with advanced navigation and control systems as well as tools to detect other aircraft in the area. With other retailers looking to use this technology and a slew of regulatory hurdles just about everywhere, Amazon is eager to get its trial phases over with so it can legally put this technology to work.
Pushing Back to School
Retailers have eagerly awaited the arrival of back-to-school shopping, thanks to the demand for school supplies and new clothes, among other essentials. And, as a report from Modern Retail detailed, Amazon is winning a growing portion of the back-to-school shopping market.
This is not so much because Amazon has superior products or services but rather because technology, in general, is on the rise in classrooms. That is prompting more people, even more schools, to shop accordingly. As a result, they are turning to Amazon in growing numbers.
Is Amazon a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 41 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 30.49% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $223.58 per share implies 26.85% upside potential.
