Amazon (AMZN, Financials) reported third-quarter operating income of $17.4 billion, surpassing both the consensus estimate of $14.7 billion and its own guidance range of $11.5 billion to $15 billion.

Just below the $27.5 billion analysts expected, revenue from Amazon Web Servicesthe company's cloud division Came in at $27.4 billion While rivals showed faster gains, Microsoft's Azure grew 33% and Google Cloud reported a nearly 35% increase, sales in the division grew 19% year over year. With $14.3 billion in income, Amazon's advertising division exceeded the expansion of its main retail operations and showed a 19% rise from year before.From a year ago to $22.62 billion, Amazon's capital expenditures jumped 81% mostly in data centers and artificial intelligence infrastructure including Nvidia GPUs. According to Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, support of artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure will consume most of Amazon's 2024 capital expenditure. With possible increases in 2025 as AI investments keep going, CEO Andy Jassy projected capital expenditures of roughly $75 billion in 2024.Based on its projection, Amazon's fourth-quarter sales range from $181.5 billion to $188.5 billion, indicating annual increase of either 7% to 11%. Reflecting cost-cutting efforts resulting in more than 27,000 job losses since early 2022, operating income for the quarter rose 56% year over year to $17.4 billion.