The 1 thing You Need to Watch in Amazon's Earnings
Key Points
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud provider in the world.
Despite its size, AWS growth reaccelerated in last year's third quarter.
AWS boasted a $200 billion backlog of business at quarter's end.
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Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock has barely moved over the past year, but come earnings time, and the stock might finally get the juice it needs to jump higher. There are many things the market is going to take note of when the company reports 2025 fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 5, but the most important one to watch is Amazon Web Services (AWS) sales.
Image source: Amazon.
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AI and AWS
AWS is Amazon's cloud services division. It's the largest cloud company in the world, with 29% of the global market share, according to Statista. However, the competition is making strong headway, and Microsoft and Alphabet are both growing their businesses quickly.
Given its size, AWS's growth has naturally decelerated over the past few years, although it reaccelerated in the 2025 third quarter to a 20% increase. That was its highest increase in 11 quarters. It had a $200 billion backlog at the end of the third quarter, not including new deals that weren't included in that number since the end of the third quarter.
The AI business lives in AWS, where cloud clients get access to Amazon's full suite of AI services, including tools to build custom large-language models (LLM) as well as use of Amazon's signature Bedrock platform. AWS performance is a good peek into what's happening with AI.
Management says that it has more features coming out faster than any of the competition, and that means it should be able to gain more business, too. Investors should keep an eye on whether or not that's happening to get a sense of Amazon's position in the market.
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Jennifer Saibil has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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