{"text":[[{"start":7.56,"text":"Amazon’s shares sold off on Thursday after it posted weaker than expected sales and offered underwhelming financial forecasts even as its cloud unit posted bumper growth."}],[{"start":18.84,"text":"Sales at Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud computing business, rose 39 per cent year on year in the third quarter to $46bn, better than Wall Street expected."}],[{"start":30.46,"text":"“We have a compelling flywheel spinning in AWS,” Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy said."}],[{"start":36.48,"text":"But Amazon reported slightly disappointing total revenues of $201.9bn and gave a weak forecast for sales in the Christmas period. The stock fell about 6 per cent in after-hours trading."}],[{"start":48.24,"text":"Amazon’s idiosyncratic business mix, including its vast ecommerce division, means it remains exposed to a wider range of risks than its Big Tech rivals."}],[{"start":57.8,"text":"Its fourth-quarter outlook points to weaker retail sales during the holidays as American and global consumers face of a rising cost of living alongside higher fuel prices due to the Iran war."}],[{"start":68.36,"text":"Chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky told investors Amazon expected a bigger hit from high fuel and transportation costs in the fourth quarter, even after it added a 3.5 per cent surcharge in April to the fees it charges third-party sellers."}],[{"start":82.76,"text":"Investors are looking for strong growth to justify Jassy’s plans to devote $220bn to capital expenditure this year, mostly focused on advanced chips and data centres to serve AI computing clients."}],[{"start":95.12,"text":"That capital outlay would make Amazon the largest spender among the Big Tech groups competing to rapidly build huge AI data centres."}],[{"start":102.6,"text":"Capex at Amazon climbed sharply to $75.8bn in the quarter with its free cash flow pushed further into negative territory at minus $33.5bn for the quarter, much further in the red than expected."}],[{"start":116.12,"text":"Jassy said Amazon would “invest to continue being the leader” as he maintained the Seattle-based group could fund its growing data centre commitments. “It will forever change the size of Amazon.”"}],[{"start":127.4,"text":"Net income, which spans advertising, cloud computing, ecommerce and media, fell to $20.7bn. Amazon blamed the decline on a one-time boost in the previous year from investment gains on its stake in Anthropic."}],[{"start":140.24,"text":"The company has been racing rivals to build data centre capacity for customers including AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI, both of whom Amazon has backed with tens of billions of dollars in investment."}],[{"start":151.6,"text":"Jassy last week said Amazon’s AWS cloud unit had mostly sold out of data centre capacity for 2027. The company “could invest a lot more, and it wouldn’t be a bad use of capital”, he said in an interview with venture capitalist Ben Horowitz."}],[{"start":166.88,"text":"Amazon’s results came after a mixed set of earnings from Google and Microsoft on Wednesday. The search giant’s stock tumbled on the back of record cash burn, with signs that AI was also undercutting its core search advertising business."}],[{"start":181.24,"text":"Microsoft, meanwhile, posted better than expected sales but said that it was experiencing delays in the delivery of data centres needed to fulfil large AI contracts."}],[{"start":190.76,"text":"Amazon’s ad business also fell short of expectations in the quarter with sales up 11 per cent to $19.6bn — its lowest growth rate since it first broke out figures in 2020 — following changes in how it serves ads to customers, directing them to search pages rather than individual products."}],[{"start":208.56,"text":"Jassy added that Amazon was not observing any impact on sales due to third-party AI agents, autonomous bots such as Meta Muse and OpenAI’s Dots that can make purchases on behalf of users. It has blocked these agents from its platforms."}],[{"start":223.76,"text":"“Few customers are doing much shopping this way yet, as the experience is still not great nor more convenient,” he said."}],[{"start":233.56,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793325029_3808.mp3"}