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Amazon earnings fall short as retail revenue lags

Alex Halverson, The Seattle Times on

Published in Business News

Amazon missed earnings estimates on Thursday, as less-than-impressive sales growth in its retail division undermined strong cloud-computing revenue.

Though the bulk of Amazon’s $201.9 billion revenue from July through September came from its e-commerce business, the Seattle-based tech giant’s cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services, stole the show in third quarter financial results.

As Amazon jockeys for its place in the artificial intelligence race — spending roughly $220 billion this year to do so — the company is counting on steady revenue growth in AWS to show signs of healthy returns on investment.

AWS reported $46 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 39% increase from the year before, reflecting its fastest growth in five years. Overall, Amazon’s revenue grew by 12%, bringing in $20 billion.

Amazon’s cloud division has long been the company’s primary moneymaker. While it doesn’t bring in the same revenue as the company’s retail side, which reported $156 billion for the third quarter, it’s much more profitable.

The retail division’s vast logistics network has enormous operational costs. The division’s revenue also showed slower growth compared to last year because the company moved its Prime Day sales bonanza from the third quarter to the second quarter this year.

 

Analysts and investors are also watching AWS carefully because that’s where more of Amazon’s capital expenditures — investments to support longer term growth — are going.

Like other companies, Amazon has rapidly increased capital spending to fuel its AI buildout. While Wall Street has been cautious about companies overspending, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said the company won’t be conservative about its AI investment strategy.

The company claims the only thing holding back revenue growth in AWS is that it can’t get data centers online fast enough to meet demand. As of June, Amazon had a backlog of contracts worth almost $500 billion collectively for AWS customers.

Amazon’s stock plunged by as much as 9% in extended trading.


©2026 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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