Amazon’s best photos
Share prices were up 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday after a strong earnings beat.
- Amazon (AMZN/NASDAQ): Earnings per share of $1.43 (vs. $0.14 forecast) and revenue of $134.4 billion (vs. $131.5 billion).
Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains gold, even if very few Amazon retail customers know it exists. Revenue rose 19% during the quarter, and reached $27.4 billion. Amazon’s advertising revenue was another highlight of the report, as it was up 19%. Overall operating profit grew 56% year-over-year to $17.4 billion, most of which was included in the company’s 27,000 job cuts as of 2022.
Founder, executive chairman and former president and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has been in the news this week in his role as owner of Washington Post. He refused to allow the Post editorial team to print his endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, and was met with widespread outrage from Submit students. As of Tuesday, more than 250,000 subscriptions have been canceled as a result.
Fortunately for Bezos, he bought the Washington Post (one of the world’s leading news brands) for “chump change”—$250 million (just about 1.2% of his net worth). So, if he drives it down, I don’t think there will be tears.
There is no doubt that the founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, made similar calculations with his luxury purchase two years ago of Twitter (which he renamed X). Critics say he has turned social media into an echo chamber for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Billionaires say, if one can’t even enjoy themselves by buying a little media, am I right? (That’s sarcasm.)
So far we haven’t seen any analysis to show Bezos’ editorial decision affecting Amazon’s share price or revenue numbers. Apparently Republicans buy Amazon Prime, too.
The best Canadian stocks
Microsoft, Meta and Google: A surprising profit in predictability
While it doesn’t have a market as large as Nvidia and Apple, other mega tech stocks in the US are no slouches. For example, Microsoft is also valued as the entire Canadian market at $3.2 trillion. Alphabet and Meta clock in at $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion respectively. (All figures in this section are in US dollars.)
Some highlights of Big Tech stock news
Here is what these companies announced this week.
- Alphabet (GOOGL/NASDAQ): Earnings per share came in at $2.12 (vs. $1.51 that had been forecast) on revenue of $88.27 billion (vs. $86.30 billion).
- Microsoft (MSFT/NASDAQ): Earnings per share of $3.30 (vs. $3.10 forecast), and revenue of $65.59 billion (vs. $64.51 forecast).
- Meta (META/NASDAQ): Earnings per share came in at $6.03 (compared to $5.25 forecast) and revenue of $40.59 billion (compared to $40.29 forecast).
All three companies beat earnings estimates across the board. However, shareholder reaction to these earnings beats has been muted. Shares of Meta were down 2.5% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, and it was the same for Microsoft. Alphabet fared better as its shares rose 3%.
It’s hard to put these numbers in their larger context, because the world has never seen anything like these companies before. Here are excerpts from the earnings calls. (Scroll the chart left to right with your mouse or fingers to read it.)
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