Amazon’s Clouds & Coin: A Buyer’s Lament

Amazon. They sell everything, really. Everything you didn’t know you needed, and a lot you probably don’t. But the bits and bytes, the cloud stuff…that’s where the interesting money is hiding these days. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? A company built on shipping boxes now mostly rents out space in the sky. So it goes.

They announced their quarterly numbers. The cloud division, Amazon Web Services – AWS – grew 24%. Not bad. A solid, almost cheerful number. Thirteen quarters of acceleration. That means things are speeding up, which, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t mean much. But for shareholders, it’s a flicker of hope in the endless dark.

The stock went down after the announcement. Ten percent. A sizable drop. People don’t like good news if it doesn’t immediately translate into a higher price. They want instant gratification. It’s a sad commentary on the human condition, really.

The Numbers, Such as They Are

Overall sales were up 14%. Not a bad haul. The online stores, still chugging along, rose 10%. Third-party sellers, those entrepreneurial spirits, added another 11%. Physical stores, bless their brick-and-mortar hearts, managed a 5% bump. But the real story, as always, is in the margins.

Subscription services, that monthly drip of cash, grew 14%. Advertising, the modern-day equivalent of selling your soul, jumped 23%. And AWS, the cloud, the future… up 24% to $35.6 billion. They expect things to stay brisk in the first quarter, maybe up 11% to 15%. More growth. More numbers. It’s all a bit dizzying, isn’t it?

The AI Boom & The Cost of Everything

That 24% growth in AWS is noteworthy. It’s faster than the 20% they saw last quarter. The full year growth was 19%. The AI boom is fueling this, of course. Everyone wants to train their algorithms on someone else’s servers. Makes perfect sense, if you think about it.

Their chip business is growing at a triple-digit rate. Triple digits. That’s… a lot. Andy Jassy, their CEO, says they’ll be spending around $200 billion on capital expenditures in 2026. Two hundred billion dollars. It’s enough to make you weep. They spent $128 billion last year. A 65% increase. It’s like throwing money into a black hole, really. But they say it will generate returns. They always say that.

So, is the stock a buy? Well, it’s not cheap. But it’s not outrageously expensive, either. It’s a risky proposition, though. This isn’t your grandfather’s dividend stock. The financial profile is changing. They’re shifting from a company that generates cash to a company that consumes it. A small position might be prudent. But don’t bet the farm. You’ll probably lose it.

The thing about these tech giants is they promise the world, and they deliver…more numbers. More complexity. More things to worry about. And in the end, we’re all just trying to get by. So it goes.

2026-02-06 01:13

The Numbers, Such as They Are

The AI Boom & The Cost of Everything

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