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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on June 8, 2022.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon is slated to report fourth-quarter earnings Thursday after the closing bell.

Here’s what analysts are projecting:

  • Earnings per share: 80 cents, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv
  • Revenue: $166.2 billion, according to LSEG
  • Amazon Web Services: $24.2 billion, according to StreetAccount
  • Advertising: $14.2 billion, according to StreetAccount

Amazon is expected to report a sizable spike in profits compared to last year’s holiday quarter, when the company was contending with higher costs tied to inflation, the war in Ukraine and supply chain constraints. At that time, Amazon was finishing up its slowest year of growth in the company’s history, with sales for the year increasing just 9.4%.

Since then, growth has reaccelerated and profits have rebounded, as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has slashed costs dramatically and consumer spending has proven resilient. The company laid off more than 27,000 employees between late 2022 and mid-2023, and it has continued to cut roles this year. In January, Amazon said it would let go of employees across units including Prime Video, MGM Studios, Twitch, Audible and Buy with Prime.

“This may be a signal that, similar to Meta, Amazon is continuing its Years of Efficiency into ’24,” analysts at Evercore wrote in a Monday note. The firm has an outperform rating on Amazon’s stock.

Shares of Amazon rallied 77% in 2023, as Wall Street applauded Jassy’s belt-tightening efforts. The stock is up almost 4% so far this year, while the S&P 500 has gained about 2% during the same stretch. 

Analysts expect net income of $8.4 billion, or 80 cents per share, for the period ending Dec. 31, 2023, compared to $278 million, or 3 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue is projected to expand 11.4% during the quarter. Although that’s slower than the growth rate for the third quarter, it’s an acceleration from the year-ago period when sales climbed just over 8%.

The quarter will include results from the holiday shopping season and Amazon’s October Prime Day deals event. Holiday sales online and in brick-and-mortar stores rose 3.8% year over year to $964.4 billion, according to the National Retail Federation, coming in at the high end of its prior expectation of a rise between 3% and 4%.

Wall Street will be focusing on growth rates in Amazon’s cloud computing unit, where revenue is expected to increase roughly 13% year over year, which is slightly faster than the previous quarter, when it showed growth of 12%.

For the past year, growth in AWS has decelerated, as businesses trimmed their cloud spend. But Amazon executives signaled some improvement in last quarter’s earnings call, with Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky telling reporters in October that the company was “starting to see more and more new workloads come up.”

Analysts are optimistic that AWS will benefit from strong demand for generative artificial intelligence, as companies increasingly require more compute power and infrastructure to run AI models. In November, Amazon launched “Q,” an AI chatbot for businesses, as well as new Trainium chips for AI applications. It also operates Bedrock, a generative AI service for AWS customers.

Amazon’s other high-margin business, advertising, will also be a key area to watch, with revenue projected to grow 23% to $14.2 billion. This week, Amazon joined streaming peers such as Netflix, Disney‘s Hulu and Warner Bros. Discovery‘s Max by introducing ads to Prime Video programming.

Analysts at Citi, who have a buy rating on Amazon shares, forecast Prime Video ads to generate at least $5 billion of “incremental revenue over time,” the firm wrote in a Tuesday note.

Amazon will discuss the report on a conference call with analysts at 5:30 p.m. ET.

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SoftBank Group shares plunge over 9% as Asian tech stocks decline

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SoftBank Group shares plunge over 9% as Asian tech stocks decline

The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025. 

Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images

Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.

The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.

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SoftBank Group shares

Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.

Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.

Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.” 

Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.

TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.

Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.

The worst performing stocks on the index were Kuaishou Technology which declined 4.8%, JD Health International which dropped 3.31% and Horizon Robotics which lost 2.29%.

Losses were also seen tech majors Alibaba Group, down 1.44%, and Xiaomi Corp which lost 1.34%.

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Palantir stock slumps 9%, falling for a fifth straight day from record

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Palantir stock slumps 9%, falling for a fifth straight day from record

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.

Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.

The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.

Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.

Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.

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Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.

Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.

By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.

What to know about Palantir's engineer-led sales strategy

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Databricks says it’s valued at over $100 billion in latest funding round

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Databricks says it's valued at over 0 billion in latest funding round

Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks speaks on CNBC.

CNBC

Databricks has just entered an exclusive club.

The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.

In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.

Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.

Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.

“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”

Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.

Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.

Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.

WATCH: Databricks CEO on AI: VCs are wondering if agentic AI will actually automate work

Databricks CEO on AI: VCs are wondering if agentic AI will actually automate work

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