Amazon’s latest quarterly results landed Wednesday as investors compared cloud growth and artificial-intelligence demand across major technology companies and weighed the cost of the company’s big planned investments. The company reported higher profits and net sales for its fiscal first quarter, with growth in Amazon Web Services providing a key boost even as the stock response reflected concern about how quickly its spending plans would translate into returns.
Amazon said it posted first-quarter earnings of $30.3 billion, or $2.78 per share, for the three-month period ended March 31. The company said that compared with $17.1 billion, or $1.59 per share, in the year-ago period. It also said net sales rose 17% to $181.5 billion, up from $155.7 billion a year earlier.
Within the results, Amazon Web Services’ momentum stood out. Amazon said sales in its cloud-computing unit were up 28% in the January-March period, describing it as the fastest increase in 15 quarters. It also said AWS sales grew 24% in the fourth quarter and 20% in the third quarter, underscoring an acceleration trend from earlier quarters.
Amazon also pointed to a forecast that was aimed at reassuring investors. The company said it expects net sales in the current quarter to be between $194 billion and $199 billion, a range that would represent an increase of between 16% and 19% from the year-ago quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting net sales of $188.96 billion in the current period, according to the AP report.
The quarter came amid closely watched moves tied to generative AI partnerships and infrastructure. The AP report said Amazon faced attention on whether its roughly $200 billion investment plan for artificial intelligence, robots, semiconductors and satellites is starting to pay off, and it noted that Amazon’s planned expenditure for the year was disclosed as a 60% increase from its $128 billion in capital spending the prior year. The report said Amazon shares slid nearly 2% in after-hours trading before rising about 3%.
CEO Andy Jassy defended the spending during an earlier earnings call, the report said, saying Amazon expects long-term returns on its invested capital. In a release with the results, Jassy said: “We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead, and I’m very optimistic about what’s ahead for our customers and Amazon.” The report said Amazon issued the statement Wednesday.
Amazon’s cloud growth also sat alongside deals described in the report with AI companies. The AP report said Amazon announced a “major expansion” of its partnership with OpenAI on Tuesday, after OpenAI said it was loosening ties to Microsoft. The report added that Anthropic last week agreed to commit more than $100 billion to Amazon’s AWS over the next 10 years to train and run its Claude chatbot, and that Meta agreed to power agentic AI on AWS’ Graviton chips.
The report also described pressures that could affect retail margins, including tariff-related costs and higher fuel expenses tied to geopolitical conditions. It said Amazon reported experiencing higher tariff costs because of President Donald Trump’s foreign trade policies, and said rising shipping costs as the Iran war affects oil and fuel prices also could cut into e-commerce revenue. Amazon said it would impose a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on some third-party sellers using its platform, effective April 17 for many sellers that use Amazon’s fulfillment services.
On the retail side, Amazon highlighted delivery speed improvements. The report said that speedier delivery helped Amazon dethrone Walmart in February from its position as the nation’s largest company by revenue, citing Fortune’s ranking of the top 500 U.S. corporations by total revenue. It also described Amazon Now, an ultra-fast delivery service offering deliveries from a selection of thousands of items in 30 minutes or less, and said the service expanded to parts of Tokyo and eight major cities in Brazil, bringing availability to tens of millions of customers across nine countries.
The broader setting for the results included other major earnings the same day. The AP report said Amazon released its quarterly results on the same day as Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet, providing investors another window into how AI-related spending and cloud growth were playing out across the technology industry. Amazon said it reported first-quarter AWS revenue of $37.58 billion, compared with analysts’ expectations of $36.6 billion, according to FactSet.