Amazon Spikes on Surprise Quarterly Profit; Strong AWS Sales

Keep an eye on shares of Amazon (AMZN) in Friday’s trading session. The ecommerce giant released its second-quarter financial results after the closing bell Thursday. In its latest quarter, the company posted a surprise profit of 19 cents a share to blow past Wall Street expectations for a loss of 14 cents a share. Chipotle raked in revenue of $23.19 billion, easily surpassing analysts' expectations of $22.39 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. In the same period of last year, the company posted a loss of 27 cents a share on sales of $19.3 billion. The online retailer reported that operating margin, a key metric, came in at 2% for the period compared to the 1.1% in the first quarter. Operating expenses rose 17% in the quarter year over year. Sales of Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing service increased to $1.82 billion from $1 billion in the same quarter a year ago. S&P Capital IQ equity analyst Tuna Amobi said in a video interview with TheStreet that he was looking for revenue growth to come up to the higher end of the company's guidance of around 17% to 18% growth. Amobi was expecting a ‘good quarter’ given that it has outperformed Wall Street's expectations in the last several quarters. Last week, the ecommerce giant held its first Amazon Prime Day in an attempt to recreate Black Friday savings in the summer. Shares of Amazon are up more than 55% so far this year, as it currently trades near record levels. Seattle-based Amazon.com is an e-commerce company that sells a range of products and services through its various owned and affiliated websites. Amazon shares ended the regular trading session in negative territory, but rallied to trade higher by nearly 20% in after-hours trading following the earnings release. TheStreet's Kurumi Fukushima reports in New York.