On November 1st, Amazon and Apple, which reported their quarterly earnings the previous day, showed contrasting performances on the New York Stock Exchange.
As of 11:50 a.m. Eastern Time (8:50 a.m. Pacific), Apple’s stock was trading at $222.48, down 1.52% from the previous day. Unlike other major tech stocks, such as NVIDIA and Microsoft, which saw gains of over 2% at the same time, Apple’s stock continued to slide. This also brought its market cap down to $3.382 trillion, narrowing the gap with NVIDIA at $3.343 trillion.
Meanwhile, Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company, saw its stock price surge 6.96% to $199.38, bringing its market cap up to $2.092 trillion. This positioned Amazon close to overtaking Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which had increased 0.20% to reach a market cap of $2.106 trillion.
Both companies announced their third-quarter results after the market closed on October 31st. Apple’s Q3 earnings slightly exceeded market expectations, but it projected that Q4 growth would fall short of forecasts. Apple predicted single-digit percentage revenue growth in the low- to mid-range for Q4, below Wall Street’s expectation of a 7% increase.
Amazon also exceeded market expectations for Q3. However, the midpoint of Amazon's Q4 sales projection ($1.815 trillion to $1.885 trillion) was slightly below the market forecast of $1.862 trillion.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud segment, experienced 19% growth, significantly above last year’s 12% and showing a return to a faster growth trajectory that investors had been concerned about. AWS’s operating margin reached 38%, the highest since 2014, contributing to 60% of Amazon’s overall operating income.
Bloomberg noted that "AWS has regained its growth momentum after a period of record-low growth last year," adding that Amazon’s cost-cutting efforts and AWS’s strong performance have reassured investors.