Investing.com -- Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported third-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates as growth in its cloud business continued to stabilize and advertising growth jumped.
Amazon rose 6% in pre-market Thursday trading following the report.
Amazon reported Q2 EPS of $0.94 on revenue of $143.1 billion, beating estimates of $0.58 on revenue of $141.53B.
Net sales in North America rose 11% to $87.9B year-on-year in Q3.
Amazon Web Services, its cloud business segment, grew revenue 12% to $23.1B, slightly missing estimates of $23.2B, but operating income jumped 29% to $6.98B.
Advertising revenue jumped 26% to $12.06B from a year earlier.
Looking ahead to Q4, the company forecast revenue in a range of $160B to $167B, in-line with expectations of $167.2B. Operating income was guided in a range of $7.0B and $11.0B.
"Overall this was a strong print & in-line with our retail margin thesis," said Piper Sandler analysts, who cut the price target by $15 to $170 per share.
Citi analysts hiked the price target by $10 to $177 per share as they see a combination of "attractive valuation" and "a structurally more profitable business."
"We believe AWS is well positioned to deliver accelerating growth as optimization headwinds abate as Amazon gains consumer wallet share given the mix-shift to essentials, while expanding margins," they said.
Additional reporting by Senad Karaahmetovic