Amazon Shares Surge After AWS Reports 37% Revenue Growth

Amazon.com Inc. shares surged 15.3% to $271.58 on Friday, marking the stock's best single-day performance since 2012. The rally followed the release of second-quarter earnings, where investor sentiment shifted positively despite the company increasing its projected 2026 cash capital spending to approximately $220 billion from $200 billion due to higher memory costs.

Driving the growth was the performance of Amazon Web Services, which saw revenue grow 37% year over year to $42.2 billion. This represents the fastest growth for the cloud unit in 18 quarters. AWS reported a contracted backlog of $496 billion and an operating income of $16.6 billion for the June quarter, achieving a margin of over 39%.

Management noted that the cloud division's margins are 650 basis points wider year over year. The company further indicated that customers have already reserved a significant portion of its capacity for 2027 and 2028.