Amazon's Q3 results beat expectations, sending stock soaring
Amazon just posted some seriously strong third-quarter results, sending its stock up 13% in after-hours trading.
The company pulled in $180.1 billion in revenue—well above what Wall Street guessed—and earnings per share hit $1.95 (analysts expected $1.57).
Not bad for a Thursday.
AWS drives revenue surge; CEO addresses recent layoffs
Most of Amazon's boost came from AWS, its cloud business, which jumped 20% to $33 billion—its fastest growth since 2022—even though it's still growing slower than Google and Microsoft's cloud arms.
Riding this momentum, Amazon bumped up its annual spending forecast to $125 billion and thinks Q4 sales could top $200 billion.
On the people front, CEO Andy Jassy addressed the recent layoffs of 14,000 employees during the earnings call and emphasized they weren't financially driven—a move reflecting the company's evolving culture.