Amazon is expected to release its third-quarter financial report after the market closes on Thursday.

According to the data from LSEG, analysts currently predict:

• Earnings per share: $1.96 after adjustment
• Revenues: $202.31 million

Wall Street is also paying attention to several other key revenue indicators:

• Amazon Cloud Services ( Amazon Web Services , AWS ): $45.48 billion, data from StreetAccount
• Advertising: $20.82 billion, data from StreetAccount

Investors expect Amazon's cloud business to experience strong growth. StreetAccount predicts that AWS sales will increase by 38%, higher than the 37% growth rate in the previous quarter. This will be the AWS fifth consecutive quarter of accelerated revenue growth.

This momentum is not expected to slow down. CEO Andy Jassy ( Andy Jassy ) stated that Amazon's cloud computing capacity for next year is "basically sold out," and the company has also received a large number of commitments for capacity in 2028.

Last week, Jia Xi stated in the Andreessen Horowitz podcast: “We always reserve a portion for on-demand services, as well as our reasoning services Bedrock or EC2, but most of the large production capacity has been sold out. A considerable portion for 2028 has also been sold out.”

Wall Street will also pay attention to the comments made by Amazon executives regarding the expenditures on AI.

Last quarter, the company raised its capital expenditure forecast for 2026 to $220 billion, up from the previous $200 billion. Analysts surveyed by StreetAccount expect Amazon's capital expenditure in 2027 to further increase to over $280 billion.

To meet the surge in demand for AI computing power, Amazon is accelerating the deployment of more data centers. Aggressive spending has eroded the company's cash flow. In its July report, the company stated that its free cash flow over the past 12 months was negative $7.6 billion, compared to positive $18.2 billion a year ago. Estimates for FactSet indicate that the company is expected to remain in a state of negative free cash flow this quarter, with approximately $9.9 billion in capital outflows.

Alphabet and Meta also reported negative free cash flows in their latest quarterly financial reports. Microsoft stated on Wednesday that its free cash flow for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 decreased by 27%, but unlike other large-scale cloud service providers, its cash flow remained positive.

As Amazon continues to invest more in AI, the company has also been steadily reducing its workforce. Since 2022, the company has laid off over 57,000 employees, which accounts for about 16% of its total workforce. This year, layoffs have continued through multiple rounds of smaller-scale cuts.

The company laid off some employees from its device software and services team on Wednesday in order to “operate more efficiently and better align with our product roadmap,” an Amazon spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. The company stated that the number of layoffs was less than 250 people.

During the third quarter, Amazon made headlines for preventing Meta's Muse AI proxies from shopping on its platform. The company stated that it was not notified in advance of Muse's intention to access its online store, nor did it ever agree to participate.

This move is in line with Amazon's broader stance regarding third-party proxies accessing its website. Amazon has blocked dozens of external proxies, including Perplexity; the latter was sued by Amazon last year for allegedly hiding its AI shopping bot.

While restricting third-party proxies from accessing its website, Amazon is also increasingly investing in its own tools. In May of this year, Amazon renamed its Rufus AI shopping chatbot to Alexa, for, and Shopping.

Amazon stated on Thursday that more than 400 million shoppers have used this assistant, and the number of people using the Alexa for Shopping proxy function has "more than doubled" since the beginning of the year.

The company stated that this tool now boasts over 100 shopping-related features, including creating gift lists, managing subscriptions, and handling account changes, among others.

As competitors such as Meta and OpenAI increase their investment in AI shopping tools, analysts believe that these services may pose a risk to Amazon's digital advertising business. Users are turning to services like Muse and ChatGPT to research products, or in some cases, they are directly entrusting purchases to AI agents, which means they are bypassing the sponsored ads on Amazon's website.

Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report last week: “We expect Amazon to eventually develop its own proxy shopping product, and its proprietary purchasing data and e-commerce infrastructure will put it in a favorable position. The key question is whether Amazon will be willing to accept third-party proxies under conditions that are conducive to monetization.”