Andy Jassy, CEO Amazon Web Services, speaks at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, October 25, 2016.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Amazon reported third-quarter earnings and revenue on Thursday that sailed past analysts’ estimates. The stock initially popped in extended trading, but then gave up most of its gains.
Here are the results:
Earnings per share: 94 cents per share vs. 58 cents per share expected by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
Revenue: $143.1 billionvs. $141.4 billion expected by LSEG.
Investors are also following these segment numbers:
Amazon Web Services: $23.1 billion vs. $23.2 billion in expected revenue, according to StreetAccount
Advertising: $12.1 billion vs. $11.6 billion in expected revenue, according to StreetAccount
Amazon said fourth-quarter sales, which include the key holiday period, will be between $160 billion and $167 billion. Analysts were expecting revenue of $166.6 billion, according to LSEG. At the mid-point of its guidance range, revenue of $163.5 billion would represent growth of 9.6% from $149.2 billion a year earlier.
Revenue climbed 13% in the third quarter, a sign that the business is seeing some acceleration after a difficult 2022 that was marred by soaring inflation and rising interest rates.
Amazon has been in cost-cutting mode for the past year as it became clear that it expanded too quickly during the pandemic. The company has laid off 27,000 employees since last fall, and it’s axed some of its more unprofitable bets.
CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos at the helm in mid-2021, said those belt-tightening efforts continue to bear fruit.
“We had a strong third quarter as our cost to serve and speed of delivery in our Stores business took another step forward, our AWS growth continued to stabilize, our Advertising revenue grew robustly, and overall operating income and free cash flow rose significantly,” Jassy said in a statement.
Sales in Amazon’s core e-commerce business continued to recover, expanding 7% year over year, after growing 4% in the previous quarter. The September quarter includes the results of this year’s Prime Day promotion, which took place in July. Amazon described it as its “biggest ever” sale.
Net income more than tripled to $9.9 billion, or 94 cents a share, from $2.9 billion, or 28 cents a share, a year earlier. Net income for the quarter includes pre-tax valuation gain of $1.2 billion from the company’s investment in electric car company Rivian.
Amazon’s results follow better-than-expected numbers from Alphabet and Meta earlier this week. However, shares of both of those companies fell after their earnings reports. Alphabet investors were concerned about disappointing revenue in the Google Cloud division, while Meta’s selloff resulted from cautionary comments regarding the ad market in light of the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Amazon shares fell more than 6% over the past two trading days, as the response to Alphabet and Meta’s numbers hit their mega-cap tech peers.
Digital advertising continues to be a bright spot for Amazon, as third-party sellers and large brands bolster their ad spending to improve visibility in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Ad revenue increased 26% from a year earlier. That’s much faster than Google’s ad growth, which was 9%, and topped Facebook’s ad growth of 23%. Snap said revenue rose just 5%.
In cloud, however, Amazon appears to be giving up some market share. Amazon Web Services, which leads Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, showed growth in the quarter of 12%. Microsoft earlier this week said Azure revenue jumped 29%, and Google Cloud expanded by 22%.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is on the launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites, which are expected to eventually rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 9, 2025.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
Amazon on Monday launched the first batch of its Kuiper internet satellites into space after an earlier attempt was scrubbed due to inclement weather.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida shortly after 7 p.m. eastern, according to a livestream.
“We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity,” Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
The satellites are expected to separate from the rocket roughly 280 miles above Earth’s surface, at which point Amazon will look to confirm the satellites can independently maneuver and communicate with its employees on the ground.
Six years ago Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
The first Kuiper mission kicks off what will need to become a steady cadence of launches in order for Amazon to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency expects the company to have half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, up in the air by July 2026.
Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy dozens of satellites at a time. In addition to ULA, its launch partners include Musk’s SpaceX (parent company of Starlink), European company Arianespace and Jeff Bezos’ space exploration startup Blue Origin.
Amazon is spending as much as $10 billion to build the Kuiper network. It hopes to begin commercial service for consumers, enterprises and government later this year.
In his shareholder letter earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kuiper will require upfront investment at first, but eventually the company expects it to be “a meaningful operating income and ROIC business for us.” ROIC stands for return on invested capital.
Investors will be listening for any commentary around further capex spend on Kuiper when Amazon reports first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2018 conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records.
CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company’s electronic health record (EHR) system, affected “several” hospitals, leading them to activate “downtime procedures.” Trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit.
The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.
CHS is based in Tennessee and includes 72 hospitals in 14 states, according to the medical system’s website.
“Despite this being a major outage, our hospitals were able to maintain services with no material impact,” the spokesperson said. “We are proud of our clinical and support teams who worked through the multi-day outage with professionalism and a commitment to delivering high-quality, safe care for patients.”
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Oracle stock this year
Oracle didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
An EHR is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner in 2022 for $28.3 billion, becoming the second-biggest player in the market, behind Epic Systems.
Now that Oracle’s systems are back online, CHS said that the impacted hospitals are working to “re-establish full functionality and return to normal operations and procedures.”
Oracle’s CHS error comes weeks after the company’s federal electronic health record experienced a nationwide outage. Oracle has struggled with a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the Department of Veterans Affairs, marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.
Against a volatile market backdrop, the software maker’s stock has gained 45% and is the best performer among companies valued at $5 billion or more, according to FactSet. The closest tech names are VeriSign, up 33%, Okta, up 30%, Robinhood, up 29%, and Uber, up 29%.
“When you think about macroeconomic concerns, you as a company need to be more efficient, and this is where Palantir thrives,” said Bank of America analyst Mariana Pérez Mora.
Palantir has set itself apart in the software world for its artificial-intelligence-enabled tools, gaining recognition for its defense and software contracts with key U.S. government agencies, including the military. In the fourth quarter, its government revenues jumped 45% year-over-year to $343 million.
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Companies have faced immense volatility in 2025 as tariffs threaten to jeopardize global supply chains and halt day-to-day manufacturing operations by hiking costs. Those fears have brought the broad market index down about 7% this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has slumped 11%.
At the same time, the Trump administration has clamped down on government spending, giving Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency freedom to slash public sector costs. Some administration officials have touted shifting dollars from consulting contracts to commercial software providers like Palantir, said William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma.
“Palantir’s business model is highly aligned with the priorities of the Trump administration in terms of increasing agility and being very quick to market,” he said.
That’s put Palantir in the league with major contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which have outperformed in this year’s downdraft. Many companies in the space are also looking to partner with the firm and tend to flock to defense during recessionary times, DiPalma said.
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Palantir vs. the Nasdaq Composite
CEO Alex Karp has also been a vocal supporter of American innovation and the company’s central role in helping prop up what he called the “single best tech scene in the world” during an interview with CNBC earlier this year. Karp also told CNBC that the U.S. needs an “all-country effort” to compete against emerging adversaries.
But the ride for Palantir has been far from smooth, and shares have been susceptible to volatile swings. Shares sold off nearly 14% during the week that Trump first announced tariffs. Shares rocketed 22% one day in February on strong earnings.
Its inclusion in more passive and quant funds over the years and the growing attention of retail traders has added to that turbulence, DiPalma said. Last year, the company joined both the S&P and Nasdaq. Palantir trades at one of the highest price-to-earnings multiples in software and last traded at 185 times earnings over the next twelve months. That puts a steep bar on the stock.