Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com, Inc. · Cloud infrastructure (AWS)
01Wall Street Consensus
Key Checkpoints
- 01AWS long-term contract backlog growth - vs. $496B last quarter
- 02AWS revenue growth rate and operating margin
- 03Progress on Anthropic and OpenAI contract fulfillment
- 04Data center capex guidance
- 05North America and international commerce margins
Upside Catalysts
- Revenue recognition beginning on the expanded Anthropic contract
- Ramp of the $38B, seven-year OpenAI compute contract
- New AWS regions and capacity expansion
Risk Factors
- Customer concentration - dependence on the Anthropic and OpenAI contracts
- Free cash flow pressure from heavy capex
- Intensifying cloud competition from Azure and Google Cloud
- Uncertain pace of revenue recognition on long-term contracts
EEPS History (Last 15 Quarters)
Actual EPS vs Consensus — Green Beat · Red Miss
1RPO Watch
The key figure in Amazon's third-quarter earnings is AWS's long-term contract backlog. It stood at $496B as of the second quarter. More than half of that backlog is anchored by Anthropic, and Amazon also holds a seven-year, $38B compute contract with OpenAI.
This quarter, the question is whether the backlog keeps growing - whether an expanded Anthropic deal gets added, and whether the OpenAI contract is being executed on schedule. The second question is concentration: dependence on just two customers is already high, and if it deepens further, a delay in executing either contract could shake AWS's overall growth rate.
AWS is the largest of the three major cloud providers by revenue, but it has lagged Azure and Google Cloud in growth rate. How fast the long-term backlog converts into actual revenue is the single variable that closes that gap. If backlog growth stalls, the narrative of an AWS growth-rate rebound stalls with it.