Amazon's Cloud Grew 39% and the Stock Fell 7% Anyway

Amazon grew its cloud 39%, posted the fattest margin in its history — and fell 7% anyway, because the AI bill ate the cash flow. Intel beat its quarter and lost almost a quarter of its value on the next one. The oil majors were the only giants that printed money the old-fashioned way: refining somebody else's crude.

The big print: Amazon's AWS roared, and the cash still went backwards

Start with the part that should have sent the stock up. Revenue rose 12% to $201.9 billion, operating income jumped 61% to $28.1 billion — a record 13.9% operating margin — and AWS grew 39.3% to $46.0 billion, its fastest pace in nearly five years, beating the roughly $45.4 billion expected. On operations alone, a blowout.

Now the part the market actually traded. Headline EPS was $1.89 vs $1.96 expected (LSEG), revenue just missed the $202.31 billion consensus, and advertising revenue of $19.64 billion trailed the $20.82 billion StreetAccount forecast. And then the bill: $77.3 billion spent on property and equipment in one quarter, roughly $220 billion of cash capex confirmed for 2026, and trailing-twelve-month free cash flow swung to an outflow of $42.4 billion vs a $14.8 billion inflow a year ago. The EPS dip is mostly arithmetic — last year's quarter carried a $9.5 billion Anthropic gain — but the cash burn is real, and the holiday-quarter guide (sales $240–247 billion, operating income $28.5–33.5 billion) landed at or below consensus midpoints.

The stock had already fallen 4.25% Thursday to $243.79, dropped another 7.3% after hours to $225.99, and by early Friday afternoon had clawed back to about $239. Two straight nights of the same trade — Alphabet Wednesday, Amazon Thursday: the growth is real, and investors are now asking who pays for it. Official earnings page

Amazon daily closes, last ~90 days — up 1.4% over the window; the last bar is today's partial session, recovering part of the 7.3% after-hours drop. Data: Yahoo Finance, checked October 30, 2026.

The quick hits

• Intel (INTC) — BEAT, THEN WRECKED. Adjusted EPS $0.52 vs $0.40 expected; revenue $16.51B, up 21%, roughly in line, with Data Center and AI revenue up 78% to $7.3B. None of it mattered: Q4 guidance of $15–16B revenue vs $17.07B expected and $0.25 EPS vs $0.43, margin guided down to 38% from 44.1%, PC weakness, and about $300 million of Q4 revenue lost to the fatal explosion at its Israel fab. Stock −23% after hours, down about 29% from Thursday's $92.07 close by early Friday afternoon. Official earnings release

Intel daily closes, last ~90 days — down 29.2% over the window, with the cliff at the right edge landing on today's reaction to the guidance cut. Data: Yahoo Finance, checked October 30, 2026.

• ExxonMobil (XOM) — BEAT. Adjusted EPS $4.23 vs $4.12 expected; revenue $110.5B vs $104.89B expected. Inside the print: refining earned $7.17 billion, edging out upstream's $7.09 billion for the first time in at least six years, as war-driven fuel margins did the heavy lifting. Free cash flow was $19.1 billion, a $20 billion buyback is set for 2027, and the declared Q4 dividend is $1.07 a share. Stock up about 2.3% early Friday. Official earnings release
• Chevron (CVX) — BEAT. Adjusted EPS $5.28 vs $4.89 expected (LSEG); revenue $67.8B vs about $61.6B expected, up 36%. Downstream earnings hit $4.93 billion vs $1.14 billion a year ago, U.S. refineries ran a record 1.09 million barrels a day at 98% of capacity, and net debt is down nearly $14 billion from the end of 2025. Stock up about 1.6% early Friday. Official earnings release
• Coinbase (COIN) — HEADLINE BEAT, PAPER PROFIT. Diluted EPS $2.51 vs an expected loss of $0.15 (Zacks); revenue $1.22B vs $1.23B expected, down 35% year over year, transaction revenue down 44% to $590 million. Almost all of the $718.7 million net income was a $715 million gain on crypto Coinbase holds — adjusted net income was $77.7 million — and the same filing disclosed plans for the CEO, a co-founder, and the president to sell up to 13.6 million shares (about $2.2 billion) starting November 16. Prediction markets topping $200 million in annualized revenue was the genuine bright spot. Stock slipped after hours, then fell harder Friday — down about 13% by early afternoon. Official earnings page
• Strategy (MSTR) — BITCOIN DID THE EARNING. Diluted EPS $44.75 vs $21.50 expected (Zacks), on a $20.91 billion unrealized gain on its Bitcoin; the software business shrank — revenue $125.4 million, down 3%, a 3.8% miss vs the Zacks consensus. The stack stands at 848,517 BTC at a $75,446 average cost, worth $68.9 billion at the October 23 price — but BTC Yield is −3.7% year to date: the share count grew faster than the Bitcoin per share. Strategy also spent $2.04 billion buying back STRC preferred shares, and CFO Andrew Kang steps down November 5. Stock −3.5% after hours. Official earnings page

On deck

Nothing market-moving reports after today's close — every scheduled report today came before the open — and tomorrow is a Saturday, so there is no before-open slate either. The calendar jumps straight to Monday.

Apple (AAPL) — Monday, November 2, after the close

Consensus: EPS $1.99, revenue $113.39B (estimates, MarketBeat), against Apple's own guide of 9–11% revenue growth and a 47–48% gross margin. The September quarter is mostly spoken for; the print will be judged on the December-quarter outlook — the first guide from new CEO John Ternus, on his first earnings call — and on how hard rising memory prices squeeze that margin. Official earnings page

Apple daily closes, last ~90 days — up 4.1% over the window ahead of Monday's print. Data: Yahoo Finance, checked October 30, 2026.

Also Monday after the close: Palantir (PLTR) — consensus EPS $0.41, revenue $2.18B (estimates, TipRanks); judged on whether U.S. commercial growth can keep carrying the valuation. Official earnings release

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Sources: company earnings releases and investor-relations pages linked above (Amazon, Intel, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Coinbase, Strategy, Apple, Palantir via Business Wire); consensus estimates per LSEG, Zacks, MarketBeat, and TipRanks as reported by Reuters, CNBC, Zacks, MarketBeat, and TipRanks; stock reactions per Reuters, CNBC, TipRanks, and Yahoo Finance — Amazon, Coinbase, and Strategy are after-hours moves on October 29 except where a Friday move is stated, Intel is the October 29 after-hours move and early Friday trading, ExxonMobil and Chevron are early Friday trading on October 30. Consensus figures are estimates. Checked October 30, 2026. Not financial advice.