Shares in the retailer rose by 11 per cent to $625.33 in after-hours trading as it confounded analysts by reporting a profit of $79 million instead of the loss that was expected, reports The Times.
Amazon said that sales at its cloud computing unit, which provides computing power to other companies, and which the company has said may one day dwarf its retailing operations, leapt 78 per cent to $2.09 billion.
During the quarter the company introduced four new Fire tablets, with one retailing at $50.
At Alphabet, formerly known as Google, shares spiked by almost 10 per cent to $743.50 after the company beat analysts’ expectations thanks to strong advertising sales driven by YouTube and mobile search. Revenue rose from $16.52 billion a year earlier to $18.68 billion, while net income rose from $2.74 billion to $3.98 billion.
Microsoft saw its shares rise six per cent on a better-than-expected 8 per cent surge in sales of its cloud products.
