Amazon operating profit hits $28.1bn as AWS sales rise 39%

Amazon reported a record operating margin for the third quarter as growth at Amazon Web Services accelerated. Operating profit reached $28.1 billion, up from $17.4 billion a year earlier, on revenue of $201.9 billion, the company announced on October 29.

AWS sales rose 39% to $46.0 billion. The cloud division generated $17.8 billion in operating profit, compared with $11.4 billion in the same quarter of 2025. Amazon said its company-wide operating margin of 13.9% was its highest ever.

The quarter in numbers

Higher operating profit, lower net income

Net income fell to $20.7 billion, or $1.89 per diluted share, from $21.2 billion, or $1.95 per share. Amazon attributed the decline primarily to the comparison with a $9.5 billion pretax gain on its Anthropic investments included in last year’s non-operating results. Operating profit and net income therefore moved in different directions.

North American revenue increased 6% to $112.9 billion, while operating profit in that segment rose to $8.7 billion from $4.8 billion. International revenue grew 5% to $43.1 billion. The company said moving Prime Day into the second quarter in most large markets held back the reported third-quarter sales comparison; the event fell entirely in the third quarter last year.

Cash investment remains substantial

Over the trailing 12 months, operating cash flow increased 29% to $168.3 billion. Free cash flow nevertheless turned negative, with an outflow of $42.4 billion, compared with an inflow of $14.8 billion a year earlier. These are 12-month figures, rather than cash flows for the third quarter alone.

Amazon linked the change primarily to higher spending on property and equipment, largely for artificial intelligence infrastructure. It continued to forecast approximately $220 billion in cash capital expenditure for 2026.

What Amazon expects next

For the fourth quarter, Amazon forecast revenue of $240 billion to $247 billion and operating profit of $28.5 billion to $33.5 billion. Those ranges are company forecasts, not completed results. For US readers following the business, the report shows a sharper contribution from cloud services alongside continued spending to expand capacity.