Amazon earnings live: AI growth takes center stage

Amazon (AMZN) will report its third-quarter results Thursday, a day after Google (GOOG, GOOGL) reported disappointing earnings that sent shares of the search giant plunging more than 12%.

Google’s announcement ran counter to Microsoft (MSFT), which reported better-than-expected results Wednesday, helping to push that stock higher.

Wall Street will focus on Amazon’s AWS growth, though as Google’s results show, business fundamentals still drive stock moves.

For the quarter, Amazon is projected to report earnings per share (EPS) of $1.97 on revenue of $202.25 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. The company reported EPS of $1.95 and revenue of $180.16 billion in the same period last year.

AWS revenue is projected to come in at $45.68 billion, up 38% versus $33 billion in Q3 2025. Online store sales should hit $69.6 billion, up 3%, while advertising is set to reach $20.91 billion, an 18% increase.

Investors will also be keeping their eyes on Amazon’s capital expenditures. Google and Microsoft offered lower-than-expected capex outlooks in their reports, while Meta raised the lower end of its guidance during its earnings announcement last week.

Amazon, like its peers, is spending tens of billions on the AI buildout, and while a pullback may help the company’s stock, it would also put pressure on the broader AI industry, including chip makers and neocloud providers. Read more.

245.51 -9.09 (-3.57%)

As of 3:06:12 PM EDT. Market Open.

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BofA keeps Buy on Amazon with $320 target ahead of earnings

Bank of America expects AWS, Amazon’s cloud unit, to drive upside in third-quarter results from new capacity, price increases, AI lab contracts, and growing enterprise demand.

“Ultimately, we continue to believe the biggest drivers of the stock are expectations around the AI opportunity and returns on capex,” the company wrote in a note to clients. “The key risk is high expectations (possibly at 42%+), but results should suggest strong ROI on capacity capex.”

Risks include rising capital spending, 4Q cost pressure from higher gas prices, and soft Q3 ad revenue, which could fuel concerns about AI shopping agents.

The company maintains its Buy rating on Amazon with a $320 target ahead of earnings.
AWS operating margins in focus

UBS analyst Stephen Ju writes in an investor note that he’ll be focusing on AWS’s operating margins, which he pegs at 46% for 2027 versus street estimates of 39% as revenue continues to ramp.

Oppenheimer’s Jason Helfstein concurred in a note, saying that chip efficiency and revenue growth should lead to better-than-anticipated margins going forward.
AWS is well positioned to capitalize on AI demand: Analyst

“We continue to believe AWS is well positioned to capitalize on AI demand, from workforces modernizing tasks and emerging consumer applications (e.g., AI assistants),” KeyBanc Capital Markets’ Justin Patterson wrote in a note to investors.

“As agentic workloads are more CPU-intensive, AWS’s Graviton chip offers both price and performance advantages and is attracting customers like Meta. Further, we believe services like Bedrock make it easy for enterprises to switch between models, providing AWS the ability to benefit from open-weight and closed-weight models,” he added.

The AWS logo is displayed on a smartphone screen placed on a reflective surface onto which an illustration of blue printed circuit boards is projected in Creteil, France, on September 9, 2026, after Qualcomm Technologies and Amazon announced a collaboration to develop artificial intelligence chips for Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) AI infrastructure. (Photo by Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images) · NurPhoto via Getty Images
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