Amazon results highlights
Share prices rose 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday following the sharp rise in earnings.
- Amazon (AMZN/NASDAQ): Earnings per share of $1.43 (vs. $0.14 forecast) and revenue of $134.4 billion (vs. $131.5 billion forecast).
Amazon Web Services (AWS) stays the golden goose, even when only a few Amazon retail customers understand it exists. Revenue rose 19% within the quarter to $27.4 billion. Another area highlighted within the report was Amazon’s promoting revenue, which increased 19%. Total operating income increased 56% year-over-year to $17.4 billion, largely as a result of the 27,000 job cuts the corporate has eliminated since 2022.
Jeff Bezos, founder, chairman and former president and CEO of Amazon, made headlines this week in his role as owner of. He refused to permit the Post editorial board to print its endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, which was met with widespread outrage from readers. As of Tuesday, greater than 250,000 subscriptions had been canceled.
Luckily for Bezos, he bought the Washington Post (considered one of the world’s leading news brands) for “spare change” – $250 million (roughly just 1.2% of his net value). So when he drives it into the bottom, I do not think he’ll shed any tears.
No doubt Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk is making similar calculations along with his luxury purchase of Twitter (which he renamed X) two years ago. Critics say he has turned the social platform into an echo chamber for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. What are the billions for? If someone cannot even have a good time buying some media, am I right? (That’s sarcasm.)
To date, we do not need any evaluation that will show that Bezos’ editorial decision has an impact on Amazon’s stock price or sales figures. Apparently Republicans are buying Amazon Prime too.
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Microsoft, Meta and Google: Predictably incredible earnings
Even though the market cap is not quite as big as Nvidia and Apple, other mega-tech stocks within the US aren’t any slouches. For example, at $3.2 trillion, Microsoft is as invaluable as your complete Canadian stock market. Alphabet and Meta are value $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, respectively. (All figures on this section are in US dollars.)
More Big Tech stock news highlights
Here’s what these firms announced this week.
- Alphabet (GOOGL/NASDAQ): Earnings per share were $2.12 (vs. $1.51 forecast) on revenue of $88.27 billion (vs. $86.30 billion forecast).
- Microsoft (MSFT/NASDAQ): Earnings per share of $3.30 (vs. $3.10 forecast) and revenue of $65.59 billion (vs. $64.51 forecast).
- Meta (META/NASDAQ): Earnings per share are $6.03 (vs. $5.25 forecast) and revenue of $40.59 billion (vs. $40.29 forecast).
All three firms beat earnings estimates across the board. However, shareholder reactions to those profit increases were still muted. Meta shares lost 2.5% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, and the situation was similar at Microsoft. Alphabet fared higher as its shares rose 3%.
It’s difficult to place these numbers into the larger context by which they belong, since the world has never seen anything like these firms before. Here are highlights from the earnings calls. (To read, use your mouse or fingers to scroll the chart from left to right.)
