Amazon's stock jumped 13% in after-hours trading after the e-commerce giant delivered a stunning earnings beat, with its cloud division posting 20% revenue growth and the company hiking its 2025 capital expenditure guidance to $125 billion. The rally helped restore confidence in big tech after Meta and Microsoft's disappointing results earlier this week dragged down the sector.
Amazon just delivered the earnings performance that reminded investors why they fell in love with big tech in the first place. The company's stock rocketed 13% in after-hours trading after reporting results that crushed Wall Street expectations across the board, with its Amazon Web Services cloud division leading the charge with 20% revenue growth.
The numbers tell a story of a company firing on all cylinders. Amazon didn't just beat earnings - it raised its capital expenditure guidance for 2025 to $125 billion and warned investors that figure should climb even higher next year. That's the kind of aggressive spending that signals serious confidence in future growth, particularly in AI and cloud infrastructure where the company is battling Microsoft and Google for market share.
CEO Andy Jassy's bet on cloud computing continues to pay dividends. The 20% AWS growth rate represents a significant acceleration from previous quarters and comes at a time when enterprises are scrambling to upgrade their infrastructure for AI workloads. According to internal Amazon documents, the company is seeing unprecedented demand for its AI services, with customers willing to pay premium prices for guaranteed capacity.
The rally provided much-needed relief for tech investors who watched the sector tumble earlier this week after Meta and Microsoft disappointed with their post-earnings guidance. Amazon's performance proves that not all big tech companies are struggling with the same AI spending pressures that have spooked the market.
Apple added to the positive momentum with a 2% gain after beating analyst expectations in its own earnings report. CEO Tim Cook told investors that demand for the new iPhone 17 is "off the chart," a phrase that immediately caught the attention of Wall Street analysts who've been worried about smartphone market saturation. The company has taken a notably different approach to AI spending compared to its peers, focusing on device-based intelligence rather than massive data center buildouts.
Meanwhile, Netflix climbed 3% after announcing a 10-for-1 stock split, a largely cosmetic move designed to make shares more accessible to retail investors. The streaming giant's stock has been on a tear this year, making the split a logical move to maintain trading liquidity and appeal to individual investors who might be priced out at current levels.
