Amazon's (AMZN) stock fell in afternoon trading Friday after the retail and cloud giant offered a current quarter forecast on Thursday that fell short of expectations on both the top and bottom lines.
The disappointing returns were amplified by a weak July jobs report, which sent the tech world and the broader market deep into the red.
For the third quarter, Amazon guided sales to a range of $154 billion-$158.5 billion compared to analyst forecasts for $158.43 billion, according to Bloomberg data. Its operating income in the third quarter is set to fall within a range of $11.5 billion-$15 billion. Wall Street had expected operating income to come in closer to $15.2 billion.
The report wrapped a wave of Big Tech results that have flashed warnings that investors have limited patience for massive AI spending. Any weakness in the core business has heightened the scrutiny on Wall Street.
Even as Amazon brought home earnings per share (EPS) of $1.26, beating estimates of $1.04 and nearly doubling profits from the same period last year, investors focused instead on the report's weaknesses.
Amazon generated revenue of $148 billion, a touch below the $148.8 billion that analysts expected, but even the slight miss failed to impress.
The company's booming advertising segment, which has routinely grown by double-digit percentages, continued to show strength, but that segment too came in just below expectations, registering $12.8 billion in revenue versus the $13 billion expected.
A bright spot of the report came from its cloud business, Amazon Web Services. AWS raked in $26.3 billion in revenue compared to the $26 billion expected and well above the $22.1 billion during the same time last year.
Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters on a call after earnings that AWS is poised to generate more than $105 billion annually.
Like several of its peers, Amazon is investing heavily in infrastructure to support the rapid deployment of new AI technologies and cloud services.
Olsavsky said the company has spent just over $30 billion in the first half of the year on capital expenditures, owing to the growing need for AWS services, including demand for generative AI tools. Amazon expects those investments to increase for the second half of the year, he said.
On the ecommerce front, the everything store has drawn increasing competition from the likes of Temu and Shein, companies that specialize in low-cost goods that rely on a direct-from-factory supply chain. Amazon is reported to be developing a discount digital storefront of its own to directly compete for fashion and lifestyle spending.
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