A busy week at Geekwire, what with Microsoft and Amazon reporting and Mr. Bezos and his newspaper and...
From Seattle's own, GeekWire, February 4:
Amazon earnings preview: Wall Street looks for cloud growth after capex surge and job cuts
Amazon reports fourth-quarter earnings Thursday, capping a tech earnings season dominated by a single question: whether the industry’s AI spending binge will ultimately be worth it.
The company has allocated about $125 billion for capital expenditures in 2025, much of it to build out its AI and data center infrastructure, while cutting about 30,000 corporate jobs since October in what CEO Andy Jassy has described as a campaign against bureaucracy.
Key numbers: Wall Street expects $211-212 billion in fourth-quarter revenue (near the top of Amazon’s guidance range) with operating income of roughly $25 billion and earnings per share around $1.96, up about 5% from the same quarter a year ago.
Cloud growth: Investors will be listening for 2026 capital spending plans, and looking at the pace of growth in Amazon Web Services to get a sense for whether that spending is paying off. In the third quarter, AWS revenue grew about 20% year-over-year to $33 billion, its fastest pace since late 2022.
“We expect 2026 to be a big year for AWS,” Wedbush analyst Scott Devitt wrote in a recent note, adding that the firm sees “opportunity for further upside to operating income expectations.”
But underscoring the uncertain outlook for long-term cloud and AI demand, William Blair analyst Dylan Carden estimated that AWS could grow anywhere from 21% to 36% annually through 2027 — which he jokingly called “a perfectly narrow range” for financial modeling....
....MUCH MORE
Like Arnold, we'll be back.
Also at GeekWire, February 1:
The last time I looked MSFT's drop in market cap. was over $500 billion.
