Cloudy outlook erases Amazon's big post-earnings gains
krblokhin
Soaring nearly 12% AH on Thursday, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) gave up all of its gains, and then some, with the stock ending the session down 2%.

Triggering the initial move higher were strong quarterly profits, cost cuts and robust sales, but worries set in on the post-earnings conference call as executives gave somewhat of a cloudy outlook.
"Customers continue to evaluate ways to optimize their cloud spending in response to these tough economic conditions in the first quarter and we are seeing these optimizations continue into the second quarter with April revenue growth rates about 500 basis points lower than what we saw in Q1," Amazon (AMZN) CFO Brian Olsavsky declared. "As a reminder, we're not trying to optimize for any one quarter or year. We're working to build customer relationships and a business that will outlast all of us. Therefore, our AWS sales and support teams continue to spend much of their time helping customers optimize their AWS spend so that they can better weather this uncertain economy."
While AWS only accounts for around 17% of Amazon's (AMZN) total revenue, the cloud segment is the engine driving its profitability, with the company's retail operations losing cash during each of the past six quarters.
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