Amazon (AMZN) shares popped in extended trading Thursday after the e-commerce and cloud giant posted third-quarter results that blew past analysts’ estimates, driven by growth in its cloud business.
The shares were up over 9% above $244 after hours, at what would be their first all-time high since early February.
The online retail and cloud computing provider reported earnings per share of $1.95, up from $1.43 the same time a year ago, and well above the analyst consensus compiled by Visible Alpha. Revenue rose 13% year-over-year to $180.2 billion, also beating expectations as sales in the company’s Amazon Web Services segment jumped 20% to $33 billion.
“We continue to see strong momentum and growth across Amazon as AI drives meaningful improvements in every corner of our business,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, adding that the company has particularly benefited from “strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and we’ve been focused on accelerating capacity.”
Looking ahead, Amazon said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to come in between $206 billion and $213 billion, compared to the analyst estimate of $208.66 billion.
Earlier this week, Amazon announced what could be its largest layoffs in company history, with plans to reduce its headcount by about 14,000 jobs, through layoffs and changes to their hiring plans as it and other tech companies look to trim costs elsewhere as they spend hundreds of billions on expanding their artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Through Thursday’s close, the shares were up less than 2% for 2025, as concerns about tariffs and lagging cloud growth weighed on sentiment around the stock.
