Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Instant Reaction: Amazon Reports Strong Cloud Unit Sales on Rising AI Demand
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Shares an Amazon kind of bouncing around right now, but
- 0:10Speaker 2: rallying in the after hours four point eight percent, gaining
- 0:13Speaker 2: as much as six percent earlier. This after our first
- 0:16Speaker 2: quarter earnings per share beat estimates. We did see that
- 0:21Speaker 2: results came in way ahead of estimates, including the key
- 0:23Speaker 2: AWS segment, extending the company's recent streak of beating estimates.
- 0:26Speaker 2: Second quarter sales and operating income guidance did though come
- 0:29Speaker 2: in a touch soft.
- 0:30Speaker 1: All right, So let's get to it with us as
- 0:32Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence senior Alys Putnamgoyle and Anna Ragrana on Amazon
- 0:36Speaker 1: and their outlook again, the stock up about four point
- 0:39Speaker 1: six percent. Gosh, not sure where to start here because
- 0:42Speaker 1: there's so many moving parts, honourg let me start with
- 0:45Speaker 1: you in terms of we always think about AWS, but
- 0:48Speaker 1: tell us about from your perspective, what you what jumps
- 0:51Speaker 1: out for you for Amazon?
- 0:53Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say AWS, Madgins. I mean, I just
- 0:56Speaker 3: can't believe how big this number is. Thirty seven point
- 0:59Speaker 3: six percent operating margins compared to last years twenty four percent,
- 1:03Speaker 3: So that's almost you know, fourteen percent increes and that
- 1:07Speaker 3: that is this phenomenal and basically shows the scalability of
- 1:11Speaker 3: this business model. And you know, frankly speaking, we weren't
- 1:14Speaker 3: expecting these kinds of margins for several years out. So
- 1:17Speaker 3: I think this is this should be really good signed
- 1:20Speaker 3: for investors that this is really a good business model,
- 1:24Speaker 3: an rock.
- 1:24Speaker 2: How do they do this? Given that Microsoft is catching up,
- 1:29Speaker 2: given that Google's alphabet's Google is catching up? How did
- 1:33Speaker 2: Amazon pull this off? How did they pull off these margins?
- 1:37Speaker 3: I think they did a lot of cost rationalization over
- 1:39Speaker 3: the last few years. They remember all the you know,
- 1:41Speaker 3: layoffs and things that we heard about, So I think
- 1:44Speaker 3: that has to do with it. Now, I mean, to
- 1:46Speaker 3: be very honest, I think this is going to be
- 1:48Speaker 3: a time that these margins will over time go a
- 1:51Speaker 3: little bit down because of new investments in generative AI
- 1:54Speaker 3: and you know, things that they have to do to
- 1:57Speaker 3: expand the capacity of their data centers. So at the
- 2:01Speaker 3: same time, I mean, you've never seen thirty seven point
- 2:03Speaker 3: six percent margins for AWS before, all.
- 2:06Speaker 1: Right, so forgive me punam, come on in, because yeah,
- 2:08Speaker 1: I mean the retail side of the business is really
- 2:11Speaker 1: super important too, So talk to us about what we
- 2:13Speaker 1: saw on that side.
- 2:15Speaker 4: Sure, the retail numbers were actually just in line, so
- 2:18Speaker 4: they met expectations and they looked at that and advertising.
- 2:23Speaker 4: I think the story really is on AWS. That's where
- 2:25Speaker 4: the beat came from. But I would say, you know,
- 2:28Speaker 4: the guidance is light of expectations, and that may have
- 2:31Speaker 4: something to do with online because if you recall the
- 2:34Speaker 4: first quarter, it did have an earlier easter. So some
- 2:37Speaker 4: of the numbers that you see on the online side
- 2:39Speaker 4: being strong and inline is thanks to that earlier easter
- 2:42Speaker 4: and the spring sale that they had, which wasn't there
- 2:45Speaker 4: last year. So some of the weakness that we're seeing
- 2:47Speaker 4: in the guidance maybe due to the online business that
- 2:50Speaker 4: we'll find out when they start talking on the call.
- 2:52Speaker 2: Put what about advertising here? This is something that not
- 2:56Speaker 2: just on the Prime video which is relatively new, but
- 2:59Speaker 2: the business over the last few years has grown massively,
- 3:03Speaker 2: and when it comes to the search function, talk to
- 3:05Speaker 2: us about what you saw with advertising this quarter.
- 3:08Speaker 4: Advertising was strong, once again relatively inline with expectations to
- 3:12Speaker 4: a little better. So we think that business continues to
- 3:15Speaker 4: grow at a twenty plus percent clip, and we think
- 3:17Speaker 4: that will continue, especially with the layering on of the
- 3:20Speaker 4: Prime video advertising business. What I'd say there is. You know,
- 3:22Speaker 4: when you think about the two big businesses that it
- 3:24Speaker 4: has outside of retail, they're very, very high margin businesses,
- 3:28Speaker 4: both advertising and AWS. So when we see the cash
- 3:31Speaker 4: flow generation that we saw in the quarter, it's really
- 3:34Speaker 4: thanks to these two businesses growing at the rate that
- 3:36Speaker 4: they're growing.
- 3:37Speaker 1: Anna Rock, I want to bring you back in because
- 3:39Speaker 1: you know, one of the previews that we had on
- 3:40Speaker 1: the Bloomberg today is, you know, Amazon earnings to bring
- 3:43Speaker 1: more scrutiny for AI tethered stocks and just saying how
- 3:46Speaker 1: kind of the bar was high coming off of Alphabet
- 3:49Speaker 1: and Microsoft last week right where they showed, hey, listen,
- 3:53Speaker 1: all this money that we're spending on AI, it's paying
- 3:55Speaker 1: off for us. We're trying to kind of find where
- 3:58Speaker 1: the AI story and what it's doing for Amazon. What
- 4:01Speaker 1: can you tell us there?
- 4:03Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you look at it, they launched a
- 4:05Speaker 3: brand new product today called Amazon Q. You're going to
- 4:07Speaker 3: see a lot of new enterprise products being launched by
- 4:10Speaker 3: AWS because you know, one of what there are one
- 4:13Speaker 3: ways to look at it is on the consumer chat
- 4:16Speaker 3: GPT kind of stuff. They're not the player over there.
- 4:18Speaker 3: They are more selling AI to corporations or large companies. Now,
- 4:23Speaker 3: that's going to take time to build up, which is
- 4:25Speaker 3: one of the reasons I'm saying that this high margin
- 4:27Speaker 3: of thirty seven percent thirty seven point six percent on
- 4:30Speaker 3: Amazon Web Services is not going to last forever. It's
- 4:33Speaker 3: going to go down slowly over the next few years. Now,
- 4:36Speaker 3: that's not a bad thing because in a scalable model
- 4:39Speaker 3: like this to you know, be able to give some
- 4:42Speaker 3: of that back to gain revenue. I think it's it's
- 4:44Speaker 3: a long term really positive sign for AWS.
- 4:47Speaker 2: Honor rog one hundred billion dollar annual revenue run rate
- 4:51Speaker 2: for AWS. That number a surprise.
- 4:57Speaker 3: Oh no, I mean we have, we have, we wrote
- 4:59Speaker 3: a big report and we don't see a reason why
- 5:01Speaker 3: this won't be two hundred billion one day. The question
- 5:03Speaker 3: only is how long it's going to take. That's the
- 5:05Speaker 3: big question, is whether it's going to take five years
- 5:08Speaker 3: to get there or six years, seven years. But the
- 5:10Speaker 3: end markets are so large, you know, we remain confident
- 5:13Speaker 3: that it's going to hit two hundred billion over the
- 5:15Speaker 3: next you know, somewhere between six to seven years.
- 5:19Speaker 1: Poonam, what are they going to do? Like, what are
- 5:20Speaker 1: the numbers we were just talking about with our TV colleagues.
- 5:22Speaker 1: Operating cash flow increased eighty two percent to ninety nine
- 5:26Speaker 1: point one billion for the trailing twelve months compared with
- 5:29Speaker 1: fifty four point three billion for the trailing twelve months
- 5:32Speaker 1: that ended in March thirty first, twenty twenty three. They
- 5:35Speaker 1: got a lot of money coming in. Like you know,
- 5:38Speaker 1: there was some speculation, do they do a dividend, do
- 5:40Speaker 1: they do buy back? Like what do you want to
- 5:43Speaker 1: be seeing that they do with their cash. Certainly on
- 5:44Speaker 1: the retail side of things.
- 5:46Speaker 4: I think while ad mesters would like a dividend and
- 5:48Speaker 4: buy back, I think they're going to invest back in
- 5:50Speaker 4: the business. So Tiana Rox points, you know, I think
- 5:52Speaker 4: we are going to see capex right on the AWS side, especially,
- 5:55Speaker 4: and they've said that they've said that in the past
- 5:57Speaker 4: that they do plan to take Capex up there. So
- 6:00Speaker 4: we do see them spending more there. But that cash
- 6:02Speaker 4: full generation is only going to go higher. You know,
- 6:05Speaker 4: these margins that they're generating on the advertising business and
- 6:08Speaker 4: the AWS business, and as those businesses scale even further,
- 6:12Speaker 4: are going straight to the bottom line and offsetting any
- 6:15Speaker 4: losses that they have. If that in the retail business,
- 6:17Speaker 4: you know, you said.
- 6:18Speaker 1: To Punham that overall guidance for the company, and that
- 6:22Speaker 1: seems to be the thing that was certainly we highlighted
- 6:24Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg In terms of their revenue guide and
- 6:27Speaker 1: second quarter net sales, they see one hundred and forty
- 6:29Speaker 1: four billion tw one hundred and forty nine billion. The
- 6:31Speaker 1: street estimate is above that range at one hundred and
- 6:34Speaker 1: fifty point twenty one. You said, you know, might be
- 6:37Speaker 1: because of the online business. What's the question you want
- 6:40Speaker 1: to be hearing? Are that analysts are asking specifically on
- 6:43Speaker 1: that call.
- 6:45Speaker 4: I think the first question is how much did in
- 6:47Speaker 4: earlier easter help them in the spring sale? How much
- 6:49Speaker 4: did that contribute to that seven percent increase that they
- 6:51Speaker 4: saw in online sales first party, because if that was
- 6:54Speaker 4: a few percentage points, and that kind of answers the
- 6:57Speaker 4: question going into the second quarter. And then the other
- 6:59Speaker 4: question I'd ask on the retail side is you know,
- 7:02Speaker 4: how are they doing in terms of just gaining share
- 7:05Speaker 4: online against these rising threats from TIMU and She and
- 7:09Speaker 4: I don't know if they'll ever answer that, but clearly
- 7:11Speaker 4: those things are growing very rapidly, and is there something
- 7:14Speaker 4: else that they're doing to offset those competitive threats?
- 7:17Speaker 2: Honor rog I'm just taking some time to look through
- 7:20Speaker 2: the cloud results here. And one thing that was notable
- 7:23Speaker 2: going into this report is that there was some discussion
- 7:27Speaker 2: about sales growth at AWS slowing to a record low
- 7:31Speaker 2: last year, businesses cutting back on tech spending. They wanted
- 7:34Speaker 2: to bring those computing bills that balloon during the pandemic
- 7:37Speaker 2: under control. Now you have Jasse out in a statement
- 7:41Speaker 2: saying essentially that the combination of companies renewing their infrastructure
- 7:45Speaker 2: modernization efforts and the appeal of aws's AI capabilities is
- 7:48Speaker 2: reaccelerating aws's growth rate. Is that him saying companies are
- 7:53Speaker 2: done cutting back on their cloud spend. Is that him
- 7:56Speaker 2: saying the worst is behind us when it comes to
- 7:59Speaker 2: company tiping their bell.
- 8:02Speaker 3: Yeah, And frankly speaking, he had to say that because
- 8:04Speaker 3: both Microsoft and Google came up with very good numbers. Now,
- 8:07Speaker 3: when you look at AWS commitments, you know, they gave
- 8:10Speaker 3: out a figure called cloud commitments, which is people signing
- 8:13Speaker 3: long term contracts even in the last you know, I
- 8:16Speaker 3: would say one and a half to two years. Those
- 8:18Speaker 3: numbers have been very strong, twenty percent, thirty percent even higher,
- 8:22Speaker 3: which means people are making those commitments they're not just
- 8:25Speaker 3: using them, They're not using those cloud credits. They're just
- 8:28Speaker 3: pacing themselves into a variable cost model, and then when
- 8:32Speaker 3: economic conditions improve for their clients, they will, you know,
- 8:35Speaker 3: get the consumption up. And that's what we're seeing right now.
- 8:38Speaker 1: Anareg, what's your number one question for the call?
- 8:42Speaker 3: The number one question is can you break out your
- 8:45Speaker 3: AI workloads versus the non AI workloads on AWS? Because
- 8:50Speaker 3: Microsoft's already saying so, if Microsoft sales growth has let's say,
- 8:53Speaker 3: you know, thirty percent, seven percentage points of that is
- 8:56Speaker 3: because of AI, I want to know that exact number
- 8:59Speaker 3: for aw US. I don't think they're going to give
- 9:01Speaker 3: it this time, but that that's my number one question.
- 9:05Speaker 2: Hey, we forgive us, but we got earnings crossing again
- 9:08Speaker 2: right now. Shares AMD down about four point two percent
- 9:11Speaker 2: in the after hours. Second quarter revenue coming in at
- 9:15Speaker 2: five point four to six billion dollars estimates were for
- 9:17Speaker 2: the midpoint there five point seven first quarter just atdps,
- 9:21Speaker 2: did beat estimates. Should note also operating margin coming in
- 9:26Speaker 2: above estimates at twenty one percent versus estimates of twenty
- 9:29Speaker 2: point eight percent. First quarter capex, though coming in way
- 9:34Speaker 2: above estimates one hundred and forty two million dollars. Carrol
- 9:36Speaker 2: estimates were for one hundred and eighteen point four million dollars.
- 9:39Speaker 1: Amd On now down more than five percent. In the
- 9:41Speaker 1: after market, Amazon, we continue to talk about it. Their
- 9:44Speaker 1: cloud unit posting the strongest sales growth in a year,
- 9:46Speaker 1: a sign that the retailer's most profitable unit is recovering
- 9:49Speaker 1: from a slump as businesses resume spending on technology projects.
- 9:53Speaker 1: And we've seen the shares certainly rally here in the
- 9:56Speaker 1: after market. We're talking with Pudam Goyle and Honor Agrana
- 10:00Speaker 1: of our intelligence Bloomberg Intelligence team put them, is there
- 10:03Speaker 1: anything in here too that you get an idea of
- 10:05Speaker 1: kind of how consumers are doing? Certainly, Amazon is such
- 10:08Speaker 1: a great key metric when it comes to this what
- 10:11Speaker 1: are you seeing in that front?
- 10:14Speaker 4: I think Amazon continues to take share. So when you
- 10:16Speaker 4: look at the consumer dynamics today in retail, Amazon has
- 10:20Speaker 4: been taking share. Most of the consumer is still cautious,
- 10:24Speaker 4: they're still training down to value, they are spending where
- 10:27Speaker 4: they want to spend, and they're spending more on staples
- 10:30Speaker 4: than they are on discretionary. So I think the numbers
- 10:33Speaker 4: that they've posted today show that they continue to take share, and.
- 10:36Speaker 1: I just want to point in Amazon shaares now are
- 10:37Speaker 1: only up about one percent here, so they've definitely pared
- 10:40Speaker 1: back some of their earlier moves.
- 10:42Speaker 2: Put them on a report like this. I see the
- 10:45Speaker 2: way that Amazon is dominating when it comes to cloud,
- 10:47Speaker 2: when it comes to advertising, when it comes to online retail,
- 10:51Speaker 2: They're in healthcare now, They're getting everywhere. And I guess
- 10:54Speaker 2: my question for you is about regulatory risk here. FTC
- 10:57Speaker 2: has a suit filed against the company, and I'm wondering
- 11:01Speaker 2: how investors should think about regulatory risk here. I mean,
- 11:04Speaker 2: this is a close to two trillion dollar company.
- 11:08Speaker 4: Well, we have analysts that cover it on the regulatory side,
- 11:11Speaker 4: and I think so far the bi opinion is that
- 11:15Speaker 4: we don't see a big risk to the Amazon business
- 11:18Speaker 4: as it stands today, though we also don't see a
- 11:21Speaker 4: breakup happening. We put very low probability on that. You know,
- 11:25Speaker 4: when you think about the different businesses that Amazon competes,
- 11:27Speaker 4: and it is a dominant share in many of them,
- 11:31Speaker 4: but it's also a very small share in many of them,
- 11:33Speaker 4: like the few that you mentioned healthcare. You know, Amazon's
- 11:35Speaker 4: still a very small player in the healthcare business. In
- 11:38Speaker 4: the grocery business where they're trying to make in roads,
- 11:41Speaker 4: they're very small there. They are a large retailer, but
- 11:44Speaker 4: most of their retail business is third party operated more
- 11:47Speaker 4: than sixty percent. So there's arguments to be made on
- 11:51Speaker 4: both sides, but our opinion at BI is that it's
- 11:54Speaker 4: not going to be easy for the FTC to force
- 11:57Speaker 4: a breakup here.
- 11:58Speaker 2: I see Honor rog just nodding his head from sgo
- 12:00Speaker 2: right now. I'm wondering your thoughts on this an a
- 12:02Speaker 2: rug and if you have anything to add when it
- 12:03Speaker 2: comes to AWS, because certainly they're the dominant play. I mean,
- 12:06Speaker 2: they invented the category, no question.
- 12:09Speaker 3: Yeah, but they invented the category and Microsoft's been closing
- 12:11Speaker 3: that chair like for a while now, and in AI
- 12:14Speaker 3: Microsoft doing far better. Googled growing much faster, Microsoft going
- 12:18Speaker 3: even faster. So nobody can say that they dominate the
- 12:22Speaker 3: cloud space right now. You know, they have to watch
- 12:24Speaker 3: the heels at any given time you see the number
- 12:27Speaker 3: of product releases from AWS in the amount of you know,
- 12:30Speaker 3: marketing they're putting behind it just to say that they're
- 12:32Speaker 3: not behind Microsoft, So I would not say that they
- 12:35Speaker 3: are monopoly when it comes to cloud. I mean, there's
- 12:38Speaker 3: so many players at this point.
- 12:39Speaker 1: Well's so funny that you say that I'm reading to
- 12:40Speaker 1: the press release right now and there's like a ton
- 12:43Speaker 1: of stuff on AI. But it's a lot of It's
- 12:46Speaker 1: just a lot of stuff, And I guess, you know,
- 12:49Speaker 1: what are you looking for an a rag? Is you
- 12:51Speaker 1: read through like what they're doing here in Amazon Q
- 12:53Speaker 1: and what they're doing with salesforce? Like like what is
- 12:56Speaker 1: it that you're looking for as you pars through? What's
- 12:58Speaker 1: a lot of words.
- 13:00Speaker 3: Yeah, So the way you want to think about it,
- 13:02Speaker 3: Microsoft disclose some numbers. When we back into that, it
- 13:06Speaker 3: shows us that Microsoft just on their cloud business is
- 13:09Speaker 3: generating a billion dollars a quarter at this point, which
- 13:13Speaker 3: is a quarterly revenue of four billion dollars. Amazon's not
- 13:16Speaker 3: going to give any close to number like that. They
- 13:18Speaker 3: are nowhere close to that. So I think that's basically
- 13:21Speaker 3: shows that the competition is really tough right now and
- 13:24Speaker 3: they have to launch all these products in order for
- 13:27Speaker 3: enterprises or companies to embrace it so that they can
- 13:30Speaker 3: down the road give that number out. So if they
- 13:32Speaker 3: give a number out, I think it'll be a very
- 13:34Speaker 3: very different ballgame tomorrow, but I doubt that's going to
- 13:37Speaker 3: happen today.
- 13:38Speaker 2: Put on my I'm you know, in our conversations last
- 13:40Speaker 2: week about meta platforms, we spoke to your colleague Man Deep,
- 13:43Speaker 2: saying a lot about how advertising was, how AI had
- 13:48Speaker 2: meta platforms was being used to really help with advertising,
- 13:52Speaker 2: And I kind of want to frame the same question
- 13:54Speaker 2: to you. It's about e commerce and how what Amazon
- 13:58Speaker 2: is doing when it comes to We talk a lot
- 14:01Speaker 2: about that in the context of AWS, but how does
- 14:04Speaker 2: it help the core business getting people to buy more
- 14:07Speaker 2: stuff and get more stuff delivered at Amazon?
- 14:11Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean AI. Generative AI especially is crucial for retail.
- 14:15Speaker 4: In fact, we think it's one of the biggest drivers
- 14:17Speaker 4: to the search or the next leg of growth that
- 14:19Speaker 4: you're going to see online. When you think about generative
- 14:22Speaker 4: AI and you think about search, right, we go shop online,
- 14:25Speaker 4: we put something in the search bar, and we get
- 14:28Speaker 4: a million responses. Half of them, more than half of
- 14:30Speaker 4: them are not relevant. So as you increase the relevancy
- 14:33Speaker 4: of the search, you're going to also increase conversion because
- 14:37Speaker 4: you're giving customers what they want, so huge huge ROI
- 14:40Speaker 4: and getting the search right. And then outside of that,
- 14:43Speaker 4: you know, there is there are a lot of tools,
- 14:45Speaker 4: whether it's using genai to create your marketing, to create
- 14:49Speaker 4: product there are so many things that you could do
- 14:51Speaker 4: with genai and on the e commerce product side that
- 14:54Speaker 4: are really beneficial to the customer experience. And in fact,
- 14:58Speaker 4: you know, outfitting yourself for example, using AI tools, using
- 15:01Speaker 4: visual tools to be able to create these scenarios. It's
- 15:05Speaker 4: all about increasing conversion when it comes to using AI
- 15:08Speaker 4: for e commerce.
- 15:09Speaker 1: All right, guys, I'm still watching shares of Amazon up
- 15:12Speaker 1: about two point six percent this as it we mentioned
- 15:14Speaker 1: earlier reporting a strong cloud unit sales, rising AI demand.
- 15:19Speaker 1: But again that second quarter net sales forecast is a
- 15:22Speaker 1: little bit light than what the street is forecasting. What
- 15:25Speaker 1: could they say analog on the call that would make
- 15:27Speaker 1: you a little bit more nervous because right now investors
- 15:29Speaker 1: seem to be pretty pleased with this report.
- 15:33Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in the cloud side, if they go
- 15:34Speaker 3: out and say that the growth for next quarter is
- 15:36Speaker 3: going to be much lower than what it is, and
- 15:38Speaker 3: it's a cause for concern because their competitors have not
- 15:41Speaker 3: said that. So one would imagine that if the current
- 15:44Speaker 3: quarter growth rate was around seventeen percent, they should grow
- 15:47Speaker 3: in that same brain sixteen seventeen percent in the next quarter. Also,
- 15:51Speaker 3: if they go out inside it's only going to be
- 15:52Speaker 3: ten twelve eleven, then I think that's a problem.
- 15:56Speaker 1: Same question to you put and what could they say
- 15:58Speaker 1: on the call that might make you be a little
- 15:59Speaker 1: bit more head in on this company.
- 16:02Speaker 4: If they say retail growth or the e commerce business
- 16:04Speaker 4: has slowed to little single digits, Okay, I would be
- 16:07Speaker 4: a little concerned or even turn negative.
- 16:08Speaker 1: All right, listen, We so appreciate both of you weighing
- 16:11Speaker 1: in on a company that's not a little complicated. I
- 16:14Speaker 1: don't know that I want to say complicated, but yeah,
- 16:16Speaker 1: a lot of moving pieces and so we do. Yeah,
- 16:20Speaker 1: and so great to get both of their perspectives. Put
- 16:22Speaker 1: them Goyle, she's senior analysts for e commerce at a
- 16:25Speaker 1: leisure off price retail on Zoom from India.
- 16:29Speaker 2: It's two am, so thank you put them.
- 16:32Speaker 1: Oh my god, we owe you, We owe you. And
- 16:34Speaker 1: Anna Ragrana always so helpful when we have to go
- 16:37Speaker 1: through these reports. Senior technology analyst Bloomberg Intelligence joining us
- 16:40Speaker 1: from our Chicago But are really both of them, We
- 16:42Speaker 1: so so appreciate the insight