Two from GeekWire. First up the earnings release:
Amazon stock up 11% after beating Q1 estimates with $127.4B in revenue
Amazon shares were up more than 11% in after-hours trading Thursday after the Seattle tech giant topped analyst expectations for both profits and revenue.
The company reported $127.4 billion in first quarter revenue, up 9% year-over-year. Net income was $0.31 per share. Operating income came in at $4.8 billion, up from $3.7 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Analysts were expecting $124.5 billion in revenue, and earnings per share of $0.21.
The company’s cloud computing business reported revenue of $21.3 billion, up 16% from the year-ago period. Analysts were closely watching AWS results as it is a key profit driver but has faced slowing growth amid the broader tech spending slowdown and other inflationary pressures.
“We like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.
After growing rapidly during the pandemic, Amazon has been in cost-cutting mode over the past year, trimming its workforce and axing various services and products.....
....MUCH MORE
The enthusiasm has cooled a bit, the stock is changing hands at $117.04, up $7.22 (+6.57%) After hours.
And the headline story:
Amazon began notifying Amazon Web Services and human resources employees impacted by its latest round of layoffs on Wednesday, as the company continues to trim headcount to cut costs.
The layoffs are part of the 9,000-person corporate workforce reduction announced by the company in March. The cuts mostly affect AWS, human resources (which Amazon calls PXT, for People Experience and Technology), Amazon Advertising, and Twitch.
Amazon in January announced a 18,000-person layoff, the largest in the Seattle company’s history. The additional 9,000 layoffs bring the total to 27,000 job cuts, about 8% of Amazon’s corporate workforce, which previously numbered around 350,000 people....
....MUCH MORE
Although most of the layoffs are not in Seattle, the city and King County have already seen 5,000 go unemployed from Microsoft (2743, Redmond and Bellevue) and Amazon (2320, Seattle, Bellevue), and will get hit on both GDP and tax revenue.
