Online retailer Amazon (AMZN) has laid down the law with its staff, who has been enjoying work-from-home status for the last few years. But now a large scale return-to-office mandate has kicked in, and reports from the New York Post suggest that there will be one major unanticipated issue to come with it: a huge traffic nightmare.
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Amazon’s RTO kicked in today, and with it, somewhere around 50,000 employees will be hitting the road to come into the Amazon offices in Seattle. And that in turn is prompting concern from Seattle officials, who are calling for people to “…leave extra time to get there,” by which they mean “wherever it is you are going in Seattle,” essentially.
While Amazon is pretty well aware this demand is making it very few friends in Seattle, it also worked to point out the benefits of such a move, noting that local businesses stood to benefit substantially from all those Amazon employees returning to work. But when Amazon first called its employees back to the office in 2023, for just three days a week, the highway in the area, I-90, saw average speeds drop a hefty 35%.
Problem, Meet Solution?
And while untold thousands of drivers grit their teeth, face down gridlock, and curse Amazon for forcing its employees to do something they did not want to do anyway, Amazon may well have the solution in its back pocket. The Information advanced a notion that would potentially fix at least some of the gridlock and congestion that its work force makes happen: buying Lyft (LYFT).
Lyft has been a perennial also-ran in the ride-hailing market. But with Amazon rapidly working on self-driving cars, it could theoretically buy the company—which would likely be a comparative bargain against its competitors in the field—and use Lyft as the basis to fire up its robotaxi operations. Then, offer those rides cheap—or even free—to employees, and suddenly, the gridlock gets a break and most are likely at least somewhat happier than they were to begin with.
Is Amazon a Good Long-Term Investment?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 45 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 48.23% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $248.35 per share implies 12.77% upside potential.
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