Amazon Stock Pops As Q3 Tops Forecasts: AWS Strong, $1.8 Billion In Severance Costs, Shout Out To ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty'

Core Insights - Amazon's shares increased by 10% following strong third-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations for both revenue and net income, particularly in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division [1] - Revenue for the September quarter rose by 13% to $180 billion, with AWS revenue growing by 20% [1] - Net income per share reached $1.95, significantly boosted by gains from investments in Anthropic [1] Financial Performance - Operating income remained flat at $17.4 billion, which included a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC and $1.8 billion in estimated severance charges due to planned layoffs [2] - The company announced 14,000 layoffs across various divisions, with video games being notably affected [2] AWS Performance - AWS experienced a significant outage recently, impacting numerous applications and websites, which heightened the need for positive news from this division [3][4] - CEO Andy Jassy reported that AWS is growing at a rate not seen since 2022, with a year-over-year growth rate of 20.2% [5] Strategic Initiatives - The company is focused on enhancing delivery speeds for Prime members and expanding same-day delivery of perishable groceries to over 2,300 communities by year-end [5] - Amazon has added over 3.8 gigawatts of capacity in the past 12 months to support its growth [5] Entertainment and Viewership - Amazon reported over 70 million global viewers for "The Summer I Turned Pretty" Season 3, marking a 65% increase in viewership compared to Season 2 [6] - The fourth season of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video averaged 15.3 million viewers, a 16% increase over the previous season [6] - The NBA on Prime debuted in over 200 countries, achieving an average audience of 1.25 million viewers in the U.S. during the season-opening doubleheader [6]