Amazon stock climbs 7% on robust earnings

Amazon reported its second quarter earnings, lifting the company’s stock up by 7%, despite concerns about its cloud business’s future. Cost cutting in addition to surging online sales contributed remarkedly in the robust Q2 earnings.

The company reported a small but vital beat for revenue in its cloud business, Amazon Web Services, with sales coming in at $22.14 billion, compared to the $21.71 billion Wall Street was anticipating. Amazon’s third quarter revenue outlook was also a striking beat, coming in between $138 and $143 billion, ahead of the $138.3 billion expected.

Cloud results are top of mind for tech investors, as the sector is experiencing a slowdown and uncertain future. Amazon’s AWS has long been viewed as essential to its wider business. In Q1, Amazon guided to Q2 net sales of $127 billion to $133 billion.

Cloud has been a key battleground among tech giants, with Alphabet and Microsoft reporting earnings last week with mixed cloud results. Microsoft Azure experienced a decline in revenue growth, while Google Cloud turned profitable for the first time in Q1 with an income of $395 million, a stark contrast to the same quarter last year when it reported a $590 million loss.