Amazon’s cloud unit records highest profit margin in at least a decade

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Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, speaks during The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2024.

Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Amazon said revenue in its cloud unit increased 19% in third quarter, just missing analyst estimates.

Revenue at Amazon Web Services totaled $27.45 billion, according to a statement on Thursday, while Wall Street was expecting $27.52 billion, based on StreetAccount estimates. Year-over-year growth has accelerated for five consecutive quarters.

AWS leads the cloud infrastructure market over Google and Microsoft and is an important source of profit for Amazon.

On Tuesday Alphabet said revenue from Google Cloud, which includes cloud applications as well as infrastructure, totaled $11.35 billion, up 35%. Microsoft said Wednesday that revenue from Azure and other cloud services grew 33%.

AWS recorded $10.45 billion in operating income, representing 60% of its parent’s profit. Analysts expected $9.15 billion.

The unit’s operating margin came in at 38%, the widest for AWS since at least 2014. Google Cloud reported an operating margin of 17%.

During the quarter, Oracle said it will bring database services to AWS.

“If this is successful, we would love to find more pieces of their application stack that could run well in AWS and help customers do that,” AWS CEO Matt Garman told CNBC in a September interview.

Also in the quarter, AWS announced plans to discontinue some services, including code-repository tool CodeCommit. Garman told TechCrunch that AWS “can’t invest in everything.”

Amazon will hold a conference call for analysts starting at 5 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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