by Mike Wheatley
Shares of Amazon.com Inc. edged higher in late trading today after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings and revenue, as cloud computing sales topped analysts’ expectations.
The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.78 per share, crushing Wall Street’s forecast of just $1.64 per share, while revenue for the period increased 17% from a year earlier, to $181.52 billion, surpassing the $177.3 billion target. All told, Amazon delivered a net profit of $30.3 billion at the end of the quarter, up from $17.1 billion in the year prior.
The all-important Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure business unit chipped in with sales of $37.59 billion during the quarter, up 28% from a year earlier. It accounted for almost 21% of the company’s total sales, and came in ahead of the $36.64 billion analyst target.
AWS remains the undisputed leader in the cloud computing infrastructure market, but its lead continues to be eaten away by rivals such as Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc., whose respective cloud units. Earlier today, Microsoft reported that sales from its Azure cloud and related services jumped 40%, while Alphabet’s Google Cloud unit grew by an impressive 63%.
