Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the keynote at AWS re:Invent 2024, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, held at The Venetian Las Vegas on December 3, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Noah Berger | Getty Images
Amazon On Wednesday, the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter profits and revenue, with cloud revenue beating analysts’ expectations.
Shares fell more than 1% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company performed compared to the expectations of analysts surveyed by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $2.78 vs. $1.64 Revenue: $181.52 vs. $177.3 billion
Wall Street was also focused on other important earnings numbers.
Amazon Web Services: $37.59 billion vs. $36.64 billion (via StreetAccount) Advertising: $17.24 billion vs. $16.87 billion (via StreetAccount)
Revenue from Amazon’s cloud division rose 28% year over year to $37.59 billion, marking the fastest growth in more than three years. Wall Street had expected AWS revenue to rise 26%.
Amazon and other big tech companies are trying to justify massive artificial intelligence investments that could reach $700 billion by 2026. Amazon predicted in February that its capital spending would reach $200 billion in 2026, a significant increase from last year.
The company announced first-quarter capital spending of $44.2 billion, beating Wall Street’s expectations of $43.6 billion, according to FactSet. Meanwhile, Amazon announced that its free cash flow for the past 12 months fell 95% year over year to $1.2 billion, largely due to investments in AI.
Amazon said it expects sales for the current quarter to be between $194 billion and $199 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $188.9 billion.
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