Amazon crushes earnings, Apple vs. The World ends with decisive victory for Apple
Two of the most consumer-facing members of the Magnificent 7 released earnings last night, and it seems like they’re doing pretty swell.
First out of the gate was Amazon, which had a quarter for the record books:
The company posted $180.2 billion in sales for Q3, growing 13% from the same quarter a year earlier.
Earnings per share came in at 1.57.
Amazon’s AWS cloud business saw revenue jump 20% year on year to $33 billion, powered by huge demand for AI.
Amazon added 3.8 gigawatts of computing capacity, advertising revenue was up 24% year on year, and subscription revenue was up 11% year on year.
Meanwhile, down the coast in Cupertino, the numbers out of Apple were less of a bonanza but left Wall Street admiring how it managed to pull off its top-line numbers with the myriad forces working against it.
The company’s iPhone sales were 50.1 billion.
China sales were a disappointing 15.5 billion.
While it’s been a laggard in AI, Apple’s Services division saw revenue of 28.2 billion.
And despite all that, the company pulled a rabbit out of a hat: revenue for the fourth quarter was 102.2 billion analysts had predicted. A win is a win!
The Takeaway
Amazon gave guidance for fourth-quarter sales between 213 billion, compared with estimates of 21 billion to 19.73 billion. As for Apple, its stock was recently propelled above a $4 trillion market cap, in part by leading indicators that suggested iPhone 17 sales were ahead of last year’s model.
The real test for both then? Ho- Ho- How are they going to do in the winner-take-all holiday season?