Amazon to report Q2 earnings after the bell with cloud, capex in focus

Amazon will report its second-quarter earnings after the closing bell on July 30, 2026, with Wall Street closely watching its cloud revenue and capital expenditures amid growing unease over massive artificial intelligence investments. Analysts expect the company to post earnings per share of $1.52 and revenue of $151.4 billion, according to estimates compiled by LSEG, while AWS revenue is projected to rise about 31% from a year ago, per StreetAccount data.

The results will affect investors and the broader tech sector, as Amazon is one of the so-called hyperscalers whose spending on AI infrastructure has come under scrutiny. Alphabet shares fell last week after the company raised its annual capex forecast to as high as $205 billion, and Meta's stock tumbled 9% after a light revenue outlook, though Microsoft shares surged as much as 15% on strong earnings and reaffirmed 2026 capex plans.

The earnings matter because they will signal whether Amazon's heavy AI investments are paying off, especially in its cloud division, where growth has accelerated. AWS revenue grew 28% in the first quarter, its fastest pace in more than three years, and the expected 31% jump in the second quarter would mark a further acceleration, outpacing the 28% growth from the prior period.

Amazon's capital expenditures hit $44.2 billion in the first quarter, a 77% increase from a year earlier, and FactSet data indicates the figure is expected to climb to $49.3 billion in the second quarter. The company had guided in February that capex would reach roughly $200 billion for 2026, but Morgan Stanley analysts now forecast $218 billion this year, with budgets potentially rising to $318 billion by 2028, citing a compute-constrained ecosystem and high urgency to spend.

During the second quarter, Amazon held its annual Prime Day event from June 23 through June 26, shifting it from its typical July timing due to a busy calendar. U.S. online spending across all retailers during the event grew about 9.3% year over year to $26.4 billion, according to Adobe, though Amazon does not release its own sales figures. Evercore analysts called the event "reasonably successful," while KeyBanc's proprietary data showed Prime Week spending rose 41.7%, down from 50.5% last year, indicating strength but not at the prior year's level.

Amazon has also been trimming its corporate head count, with layoffs in customer service and seller support divisions in recent months, and last week it announced job cuts in its artificial general intelligence unit following a leadership reorganization. The company has deepened cloud and chip partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, and in April struck a deal to supply Meta with AWS Graviton chips, moves that Morgan Stanley analysts say position AWS as a winner in optimizing token cost per task.