Driven by strong growth in cloud computing and advertising business, Amazon's third-quarter financial report exceeded market expectations, causing the stock price to rise by 6% on Friday (November 1), approaching its historical high.

(Source: Google)

Since the beginning of the year, Amazon's stock price has risen by approximately 32%, reaching $200.50 on Friday, close to its historical closing high of $200.

Amazon's report shows that revenue for this quarter increased by 11% year-on-year to $158.9 billion, surpassing analyst expectations of $157.2 billion. Eps reached $1.43, significantly higher than the market's expected $1.14.

Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue grew by 19% to $27.4 billion, slightly below analyst expectations, the growth rate exceeded last year's 12%, although it has not reached the levels of Microsoft Azure's and Google Cloud's 33% and 35% growth respectively.

At the same time, Amazon's capital expenditures surged by 81% year-on-year to $22.62 billion, with the company continuing to invest in datacenters and NVIDIA processors to support the development and application of generative artificial intelligence technology.

Throughout this year, Amazon has launched multiple AI products in cloud computing and e-commerce, and plans to release a new version of Alexa voice assistant powered by generative AI. Amazon's CFO Brian Olsavsky stated during the financial report conference call that the company plans to invest around $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2024, primarily for expanding its technological infrastructure.

Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy further pointed out that generative AI is a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," and the company will actively invest in pursuing this long-term goal.

The advertising business also performed well this quarter, with revenue increasing by 19% to 14.3 billion US dollars, outpacing Amazon's core retail business and keeping pace with Meta, surpassing Google and Snap's advertising growth data.

Amazon expects revenue in the next quarter to be between 181.5 billion US dollars and 188.5 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 7% to 11%. The median of this expected value is 185 billion US dollars, slightly below the analysts' average expectation of 186.2 billion US dollars.