Amazon posts its best margin ever while AI spending turns cash flow sharply negative

Amazon reported third-quarter sales of about 202 billion dollars, up 12 percent. Operating income rose to about 28 billion dollars, the highest margin in the company's history. Its cloud arm AWS grew 39 percent, the fastest pace in nearly five years. But capital spending reached about 77 billion dollars in the quarter. Free cash flow over the last twelve months fell to about minus 42 billion dollars.

Earnings per share were 1.89 dollars, below a year earlier, when gains on the Anthropic stake lifted profit by 9.5 billion dollars. For the fourth quarter Amazon expects sales of 240 to 247 billion dollars. The shares opened about 5 percent lower on 30 October and recovered most of the loss. The result fed a broad sell-off in technology stocks that day, as investors weighed fast AI-driven cloud growth against the cash it consumes.