Amazon.com announced second-quarter 2026 results Thursday that surpassed Wall Street expectations on virtually every meaningful metric, with net sales reaching $200.6 billion — the first quarter in the company's history to clear the $200 billion mark — representing 20% year-over-year growth against a prior-year base of $167.7 billion and topping the $196.47 billion analyst consensus compiled by LSEG.
The headline EPS figure was extraordinary: diluted earnings per share of $5.75 more than tripled the $1.83 consensus estimate, though a substantial portion of the beat derived from a one-time gain on Amazon's investment in Anthropic, the AI company in which the e-commerce giant has committed up to $4 billion. Excluding the investment gain, core operating performance remained exceptionally strong: operating income rose 43% year-over-year to $27.5 billion, with an operating margin of approximately 13.7%, versus $19.2 billion in the year-ago period.
Amazon Web Services was the segment that mattered most to institutional investors. AWS revenue grew 36.7% year-over-year to $42.2 billion — its fastest growth rate in 18 consecutive quarters — handily exceeding the 31% consensus and producing an annualized run rate of approximately $169 billion. AWS operating income reached $16.6 billion at a 39.4% operating margin, expanding 650 basis points year-over-year driven by efficiency gains and capacity optimization. The AWS contracted backlog of $496 billion, growing triple digits, provides extended revenue visibility and stands as the most direct counterpart to Microsoft's own $678 billion RPO figure reported earlier in the week.
CEO Andy Jassy highlighted in his statement that both Amazon's AI and custom chip businesses had each eclipsed annual revenue run rates exceeding $25 billion, with growth described as "triple digits" — language indicating that AI monetization at Amazon has achieved a scale that most investors had not yet priced at the start of 2026. Advertising services delivered another strong quarter, growing 26% year-over-year to $19.8 billion, cementing its role as one of Amazon's highest-margin and fastest-growing businesses alongside AWS.
North America segment revenue grew 16% to $116.2 billion, while international segment sales increased 15% to $42.2 billion. The grocery business saw perishable customer growth of 50% since the beginning of the year and same-day delivery is now operational in over 2,300 U.S. cities — operational scale gains that underpin long-run consumer loyalty and repeat purchase economics.
The one structural concern in the report was free cash flow. Capital expenditures on a trailing 12-month basis reached $169 billion — up 64% year-over-year — and swung the trailing 12-month free cash flow from an inflow of $18.2 billion to an outflow of $7.6 billion. Management acknowledged that Amazon will not have sufficient capacity to meet all customer demand in 2026 and 2027, implying the CapEx cycle will remain elevated. Q2 also included $600 million in one-time tariff refunds, a benefit that will not recur in Q3. Q3 guidance of $197–$202 billion was broadly in line with the $196–$202 billion range analysts expected, and the stock rose in after-hours trading alongside Microsoft's surge as investors focused on the AWS acceleration and the Anthropic gain rather than the FCF headwind.