Amazon offers cautious holiday-quarter outlook

NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. offered a cautious sales outlook for the fourth quarter that encompasses the critical holiday shopping period after delivering fiscal third-quarter results that came in below Wall Street analysts' expectations. The Seattle-based company, however, posted strong growth in its prominent cloud computing unit. Sales in its cloud computing unit called AWS rose 39.3% during the quarter that ended Sept. 30, higher than the 37% clip in the previous quarter. It marked the fastest growth rate in nearly five years, the company said. Still, shares were down more than 6% in after-market trading when the results were released as investors focused on the core business. The tech giant said earlier this month that it would hire 300,000 U.S. seasonal workers for the holiday shopping period. That’s up from 250,000 last year. Investors also have been closely watching Amazon’s quarterly earnings to see if the company’s big spending on AI is starting to pay off. CEO and President Andy Jassy disclosed to investors in July that it now expects capital spending, mostly in AI, to total $220 billion. That number includes outlays on robots, semiconductors and satellites. That’s up from the $200 billion investment plan that was announced in February and well above the $128 billion in capital spending for all of last year. Jassy had cited the higher cost of memory chips as the main reason for the increase. AMZN Quotes by TradingView See more transportation stock listings Jassy told investors this past summer that even at the $220 billion level, Amazon will not have enough capacity…

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