Amazon stock hits record, lights up ETFs
News Summary
Amazon's stock hit a record high on Friday, surging over 9%, following strong quarterly results driven by its expanding cloud business, AWS. AWS recorded double-digit sales growth, reaching $30 billion. CEO Andy Jassy highlighted that AWS's growth rate, at 20.2% year-over-year, is the fastest since 2022 and the largest in 11 quarters. He expressed further bullishness, noting that the backlog grew to $200 billion by Q3 end, with additional unannounced October deals surpassing the entire Q3 deal volume. Despite this, Amazon's shares are up about 11% this year, trailing the Nasdaq's 23% and the S&P 500's 16% advances. The stock last traded near these levels in February 2025. Over 600 Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) hold Amazon as their top component, and ETFs as a whole saw record inflows exceeding $1 trillion in October.
Background
Andy Jassy took over as CEO from co-founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021, and since then has focused on expanding the tech giant into cloud computing while maintaining the competitiveness of its retail business, which includes Whole Foods. Prior to this news, Amazon had announced the elimination of 14,000 corporate jobs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the world's leading cloud service providers, offering computing power, storage, databases, and other services to businesses, and is a significant engine for Amazon's profit growth. The company also maintains a dominant position in the global retail and e-commerce sectors.
In-Depth AI Insights
What are the underlying drivers of AWS's re-acceleration, and what are the deeper implications for Amazon's long-term valuation beyond the immediate earnings beat? - The 20.2% year-over-year growth in AWS, coupled with a $200 billion backlog, suggests a robust and potentially accelerating enterprise demand for digital transformation and AI workload deployment. This appears to be more a structural growth trend than a mere cyclical recovery. - Amazon's leadership in cloud computing, particularly its