Amazon Shows Signs of Life With Solid Results and Guidance; FVE $192

Amazon reported good second-quarter top-line and bottom-line results which were ahead of FactSet consensus expectations and provided an encouraging revenue outlook for the third quarter. While AWS remains a tremendous opportunity and performed well once again, the more important takeaway this quarter is that retail-related businesses, especially third-party seller services, are coming back and even delivered some upside compared with our expectations. We are not ready to declare victory for the company just yet, but we are encouraged by results and note that the pandemic-fueled growth surge is now removed from prior-year comparisons, so growth should optically improve going forward.