Why it matters: AWS produced $17.8 billion of Amazon's $28.1 billion in third-quarter operating income, about 63% of the total by our calculation from the release.
Amazon (AMZN) reported net sales of $201.9 billion for its third quarter, ended Sep 30, 2026, up 12% from $180.2 billion a year earlier. Excluding currency effects, sales rose 13%. The company said Prime Day ran mostly in the second quarter this year after falling entirely in the third quarter of 2025, and that growth would have been about 400 basis points higher without that shift.
Operating income rose to $28.1 billion from $17.4 billion. Amazon put its operating margin at 13.9% and called it its highest ever.
Cloud: AWS segment sales grew 39% to $46.0 billion, and AWS operating income reached $17.8 billion, up from $11.4 billion. Amazon says AWS growth of 39.3% was its fastest in nearly five years and puts the unit's annualized revenue run rate at $184 billion.
Retail and ads: North America segment sales rose 6% to $112.9 billion, and International sales rose 5% to $43.1 billion, or 8% excluding currency changes. Advertising services revenue was $19.6 billion, up 12% excluding currency changes, which the company said was affected by Prime Day timing.
Profit: net income fell to $20.7 billion, or $1.89 per diluted share, from $21.2 billion, or $1.95, a year earlier. Amazon said the decline came mainly from $9.5 billion in pre-tax gains on its Anthropic investments that were included in the year-ago quarter.
Cash: operating cash flow for the trailing twelve months rose 29% to $168.3 billion. Free cash flow over the same period was an outflow of $42.4 billion, compared with an inflow of $14.8 billion a year earlier. Amazon attributed the swing mainly to a $94.8 billion increase in purchases of property and equipment, which it said primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence.
Outlook: for the fourth quarter, Amazon expects net sales of $240.0 billion to $247.0 billion, or growth of 12% to 16%, and operating income of $28.5 billion to $33.5 billion, compared with $25.0 billion a year earlier. It said it still expects 2026 cash capital expenditures of about $220 billion.
"Our AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working, with over 39% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 ($184 billion revenue run rate) and projected revenue growth rates of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028," president and CEO Andy Jassy said in the release. The growth projections are the company's own.
Sources
- Amazon third-quarter 2026 earnings release, Exhibit 99.1, SEC EDGAR
- Amazon Investor Relations: "Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Results," Oct 29, 2026
How we checked this: We read Amazon's third-quarter earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to its Oct 29, 2026 Form 8-K, filed with the SEC) in a copy saved on Oct 30, 2026 at 8:07 AM ET, and checked each figure in this story against it and against the same release on Amazon's investor relations site.
See something wrong? Tell us and we'll fix it. Every fix is dated and listed on our Corrections page.