Amazon Stock Jumps After Earnings Beat, Ad Revenues Offset ...

Amazon (AMZN) shares jumped 8.5% after-hours and are up 0.55% in pre-market trading following the company's stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings, with robust ad revenue helping offset slower cloud services growth.

The e-commerce giant reported a net income of $6.7 billion in the second quarter, or $0.65 per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $2.0 billion, or $0.20 a year ago. The performance was well above Wall Street analysts' expectations of $0.35 per share.

Net sales increased 11% to $134.4 billion in the second quarter, with double-digit gains in the company's North America, international, and AWS segments.

"It was another strong quarter of progress for Amazon,” said CEO Andy Jassy. The company saw its best-ever Prime Day sales event, which brought in $12.7 billion in revenue. The company also achieved its fastest-ever delivery speed for Prime customers, with the majority of deliveries reaching their destination across 60 of the largest U.S. metropolitan in one day.

Analysts may be concerned that the 12% growth in Amazon’s cloud computing business to $22.1 billion, was lower than the 33% growth rate a year ago.

Jassy said growth in AWS stabilized "as customers started shifting from cost optimization to new workload deployment." He also referenced a host of generative AI releases that he hopes will maintain the company's leadership position.

The slowing pace of cloud business growth is not unique to Amazon. Microsoft (MSFT) revealed some of that deceleration, too. And while Alphabet (GOOGL) turned a profit in the cloud business during the second quarter, it's still far from being a money spinner for the company.

Amazon shares are up about 53% since the start of the year.

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