Amazon (AMZN) will announce its second quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, and the pressure is on to show that its AI investments are paying off.
The company’s report follows Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) and Microsoft’s (MSFT) own blowout announcements, highlighting growth across their respective cloud businesses on the back of increased customer spending on AI.
Microsoft reported that its Azure business brought $75 billion in its fiscal 2025, helping to push its market capitalization past the $4 trillion mark in early trading Thursday. Microsoft is only the second company to reach the milestone behind Nvidia (NVDA).
Google parent Alphabet offered up its own strong results, noting cloud revenue climbed 32% and backlog, or purchase commitments from customers not yet realized, rose 38%. Search also performed better than expected during the quarter, with sales increasing 12% year over year.
Now it’s Amazon’s turn to show that its AI buildout is driving revenue gains for AWS. The company’s stock price is up more than 6% year to date and more than 25% over the last 12 months. Alphabet is up 1.8% year to date and 12% over the last 12 months. Microsoft is up 27% and 28%, respectively.
For the quarter, Amazon is expected to report earnings per share (EPS) of $1.32 on revenue of $162.1 billion, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. The company saw EPS of $1.26 and revenue of $147.9 in the same quarter last year.
AWS revenue is expected to top $30.7 billion, up 17% versus the $26.2 billion it brought in last year. But like Microsoft, Amazon says it’s contending with supply constraints as demand for AI outstrips the company’s ability to stand up data centers.
During the company’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon’s AI business is a multibillion-dollar annual run rate business and that it’s growing triple-digit percentages year-over-year.
BofA Global Research analyst Justin Post wrote in an investor note that supply growth should support revenue trends in the second half of the year, which could accelerate AWS revenue.
Outside of AWS, Amazon is expected to post online store revenue of $59.1 billion, up 6%, while advertising revenue is anticipated to hit $14.9 billion, a 17% jump.
“The consumer was far more resilient than expected in 2Q, with CEO Andy Jassy saying in May that “we have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Wedbush analyst Scott Devitt wrote in a note to investors ahead of earnings.
“[Foreign exchange] should also have a favorable impact to International Retail sales, with the dollar weakening on a [year-over-year] basis versus most European currencies,” he added.
