Amazon forecasts bright third quarter on resilient cloud sales, shopping trends

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) on Thursday reported sales growth and profit that beat Wall Street's expectations as the company delivered goods faster and more cheaply to shoppers while recent cloud-computing headwinds began to subside.

Amazon's shares surged 9% on the news, extending its stock market value more than $120 billion in after-hours trading.

Facing an array of challenges, the company has aimed to keep its mantle as the world's biggest cloud provider and online retailer.

Amazon recently answered AI front-runners Google (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) with rival services of its own, drawing thousands of customers and touting the breadth of technology it has on offer, similar to what is powering the human-like chatbot ChatGPT.

In retail, Amazon has reorganized its fulfillment network and opened warehouses for same-day shipping closer to big metro areas, saving time and costs on delivery.

Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, said on a call with reporters that faster speeds have meant Prime loyalty customers are "shopping more often."

For the second quarter, Amazon's revenue grew 11% to $134.4 billion, beating estimates of $131.5 billion from analysts polled by Refinitiv.

Amazon's cloud-computing division has been key. In recent months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw its sales growth slow as wary businesses scrutinized their cloud bills. Olsavsky said such "cost optimization" continued, but big companies were embracing the cloud anew, a lift to the division this spring and summer.

CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement, "Our AWS growth stabilized."

The unit beat estimates of around $21.7 billion in second-quarter cloud sales, increasing them 12% to $22.1 billion. Its rivals posted bigger jumps off smaller bases: 28% growth in Alphabet's June-quarter cloud revenue and a 26% quarterly increase for Microsoft's Azure.

Arun Sundaram, an equity analyst at CFRA Research, said the results showed Amazon was holding its own, including in so-called generative AI that can create new text, images and other content from past data.