Catenaa, Thursday, April 30, 2026- Amazon topped first-quarter revenue and earnings per share, with AWS posting its fastest growth in 15 quarters as the e-commerce giant continues its massive artificial intelligence build-out.
Amazon stock opened at a fresh intraday record high Thursday before reversing sharply and falling to test its lowest levels of the week.
Even with the reversal, the stock remains on track for its best month since July 2022, up nearly 25%.
The company reported earnings per share of $2.78, up from $1.59 a year ago. Revenue was $181.5 billion, up from $155.7 billion in the same quarter last year.
Analysts had expected earnings per share of $1.62 on revenue of $177.2 billion, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.
Amazon’s all-important AWS cloud business generated $37.6 billion in revenue, ahead of estimates for $36.7 billion. AWS revenue, excluding foreign exchange, grew 28%, above expectations of 25.7%.
Analysts were broadly positive on the report, though some flagged that AWS’s growth may not have cleared higher investor expectations.
Bloomberg Intelligence said AWS’s stronger-than-expected growth “confirms our view that the cloud provider is well placed to capture rising enterprise AI adoption.”
Citi analysts said Amazon delivered better-than-expected first-quarter results and second-quarter guidance for revenue and operating income, but noted that AWS growth was “relatively in line” and “likely below buy-side expectations.”
Investors have been looking for evidence that the company’s AI infrastructure buildout is translating into faster cloud growth after Amazon’s roughly $200 billion capital spending plan pressured the stock following its prior earnings report.
The company’s AI demand story also got more support from new customer commitments.
Amazon said OpenAI is committed to consuming about 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity through AWS beginning in 2027, while Anthropic secured up to 5 gigawatts of current and future generations of Amazon’s Trainium chips.
The company also said it signed a deal with Meta to deploy tens of millions of AWS Graviton cores.
Amazon also gave investors a clearer view of the demand behind that spending. CEO Andy Jassy said AWS’s cloud backlog, future business Amazon has already contracted but has not yet turned into revenue, jumped to $364 billion in the first quarter.
That figure excludes Amazon’s recently announced Anthropic deal for more than $100 billion, making the backlog one of the clearest bull cases for Amazon’s AI spending boom.
But the spending ramp is still weighing on free cash flow, which has become the weak spot in Amazon’s otherwise strong earnings report.
Amazon said free cash flow fell to $1.2 billion for the trailing 12 months, down from $25.9 billion for the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2025.
The company said the decline was driven primarily by a $59.3 billion year-over-year increase in property and equipment purchases, reflecting investments in artificial intelligence.
The company issued second-quarter revenue guidance of $194 billion to $199 billion, above Wall Street expectations, implying growth of 16% to 19% from the same period last year.
The stock’s reversal shows investors are still sorting through both sides of the AI trade: AWS growth and backlog are accelerating, but Amazon is still spending heavily before that demand fully turns into revenue and free cash flow
