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Amazon slides as it misses on Q4 earnings, gives downbeat profit guidance

The tech giant also forecast it would spend $200 billion on capex in 2026.

2/5/26 4:07PM

Amazon shares are sliding after the company missed Wall Street’s expectations for fourth-quarter earnings, gave downbeat first-quarter profit guidance, and forecast a whopping $200 billion of capital expenditure this year.

The stock is down almost 8% in premarket trading, as of 5:50 a.m. ET.

For the fourth quarter, Amazon’s earnings per share came in at $1.95, falling short of analysts’ consensus estimate of $1.97, according to FactSet.

Sales grew 14% to $213.4 billion, ahead of analysts’ expectations of $211.43 billion.

The tech giant also forecast first-quarter operating income of $16.5 billion to $21.5 billion, well below the Wall Street forecast for $22.18 billion. It sees sales landing between $173.5 billion and $178.5 billion, compared with analysts’ expectations for $175.62 billion.

Amazon’s AWS cloud business saw revenue jump 24% year on year to $35.6 billion, powered by huge demand for AI. The Street was expecting $34.9 billion.

The company’s capital expenditure — a number that’s been watched closely in recent quarters as tech giants spend vast sums of money to build the infrastructure to power AI — totaled $39.5 billion, topping analysts’ forecasts of $34.37 billion.

Amazon continued a trend of Big Tech companies laying out plans for monster capital spending, saying it expects to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditure this year.

On the earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company had a backlog of $244 billion worth of AWS revenue, up 40% year over year.

Some highlights for the quarter:

The Trainium and Gravitron custom AI chips have a combined annual revenue of over $10 billion, growing fast.
Trainium4 chips are expected to start delivery in 2027.
Physical-store sales came in at $5.85 billion.
Advertising revenue was $21.37 billion, up 23% year on year.
Subscription revenue (Amazon Prime, audiobooks, etc.) was up 14% year on year, at $13.1 billion for the quarter.

Last week, Amazon announced it would reduce its corporate workforce by an additional 16,000 employees, after laying off 14,000 workers in October.

Go Deeper: For hyperscalers like Amazon, how much capex is too much?

Max Knoblauch38m

Trump says he’s called off impending strikes on Iran, sending stocks higher and oil plunging

President Trump on Thursday afternoon said he is calling off upcoming planned strikes on Iran. In a Truth Social post, Trump said “discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

Stocks broadly popped, with the S&P 500 moving from roughly flat to up 1.4% on the day, and oil plunged on the news.

“Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others. The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly,” the President added.

West Texas Intermediate crude futures are down 3% on Thursday afternoon, dropping sharply following the post.

Oil-sensitive stocks reacted accordingly, with airlines including Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Alaska Air, and Frontier all climbing significantly. Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean similarly jumped.

Freight companies including UPS, FedEx, XPO, and Old Dominion Freight were also up on oil’s movement.

Oil-adjacent companies including Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental Petroleum dipped.

Saleah Blancaflor4h

US gas prices drop for the third week in a row to an average of $4.12

As we approach mid-June, the national average of US gas prices has been dropping for three weeks in a row, giving some relief to drivers traveling during a busy summer season. Since May 21, prices have fallen from $4.56 a gallon and are currently at $4.12 due to crude oil prices staying below $100 per barrel, according to the American Automobile Association.

US gas prices have a tendency to peak during this time of the year, and the uncertainty associated with the Strait of Hormuz has made them more volatile and unpredictable. While gas prices have remained around four-year highs, they’re still far from when they reached their highest, at $5 per gallon in June 2022.

GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan posted on Wednesday that motorists today will be spending approximately $137 million less on gas than they did a month ago, but $385 million more than a year ago.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Prediction markets show traders currently pricing in an 81% chance that US gas prices will drop below $3.80 this year.

Pump Prices Fall for Third Straight Week

GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan posted on Wednesday that motorists today will be spending approximately $137 million less on gas than they did a month ago, but $385 million more than a year ago.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Prediction markets show traders currently pricing in an 81% chance that US gas prices will drop below $3.80 this year.

Helena Cheng4h

Intel soars on double rating upgrade from BofA on CPU growth

Intel shares are surging following a double rating upgrade from Bank of America, which flipped its stance on the company from bearish to bullish.

Bank of America raised its rating on Intel to “buy” from “underperform,” boosting its 12-month price target to $135 a share from $96.

Shares of Intel rose 5.2% in recent trading, bringing the stock’s gains thus far in 2026 to more than 200%.

Analyst Vivek Arya noted “higher confidence in INTC’s opportunity to help address industry constraints in leading edge wafers/packaging” and its ability to capture a “much larger” agentic CPU market.

Bank of America heavily increased its estimate for the global server CPU total addressable market (TAM), predicting it will skyrocket to more than $170 billion by 2030. Analysts highlighted the rise of agentic AI as a critical tailwind that will require a massive volume of traditional x86 server chips.

Beyond standard chip architecture design, the report also shows confidence in Intel’s customized manufacturing services. BofA analysts now project that its server CPU revenue could top $40 billion by the end of the decade.

Momentum was built around Intel Foundry services as surging global AI demand continuously outpaces capacity. Just last week, Google reportedly placed an order with Intel to manufacture more than 3 million of its increasingly popular tensor processing unit chips in 2028. According to the report, Nvidia is also testing to see if Intel could manufacture its next-gen Feynman chips.

Max Knoblauch5h

Chinese EV makers sink to 52-week lows as regulators warn about price war

Several US-listed ADRs of major Chinese EV makers are trading at fresh lows, following reports of domestic sales continuing to stagnate and Chinese regulators warning the companies about their price war.

XPeng, BYD, and Li Auto each hit 52-week lows on Thursday morning.

According to CnEVPost, Chinese regulators summoned automakers suspected of taking part in “irrational” competition on Thursday, warning them to comply with price laws and regulations. China has struggled to crack down on a downward pricing trend among automakers jostling for market share for the better part of a year.

Earlier this week, BYD and Nio were added to the Pentagon’s “Chinese Military Companies” list. Both automakers refuted the designation and left legal action on the table. Nio appears to be seeing a modest stock price boost from the rollout of an update to its Onvo-branded L60 SUV.

Chinese regulators summon automakers over suspected 'irrational competition'

Helena Cheng

e-Commerce Convo

China e-commerce stocks sink as Beijing cracks down on “618” discount wars

China’s online retailers are experiencing a market drop after Beijing regulators cracked down on “618” promotional practices for what it called misleading advertising and unclear promotion rules.

Express Delivery Enterprises Gear Up For '618' Shopping Festival In Lianyungang