BizNews Ricardo Portfolio: Alec Hogg on Big Tech's AI spending race and the JSE's cash handback

Well, Amazon is the same movie, but a different script. And you'd have thought that the mood would be completely different when Amazon reported. Andy Jassy came into the conference call to investors swinging Amazon's cloud business, AWS, is growing at its fastest pace in...

Five years, he said, and it sped up for six quarters in a row. That's that's momentum. Remember the story of a year ago that Amazon had missed the AI boat? Well, that story is well and truly buried. Jassy went further. He told analysts AWS will keep growing at more than 40% a year for the next two years. AWS, the market leader in cloud, the market leader in data centers, growing at 40% a year.

At least the next two years. He said it could become a trillion-dollar business on its own. And he said Amazon might end up owning two of them. Well, that's bold stuff. Amazon's shop is also more profitable than it's ever been. The company posted its best profit margin in history. So why did the shares drop about 7% when they reopened for trading? Well, there are three reasons. First,

Amazon also missed, just slightly, on both sales and profit. And its forecast for the Christmas quarter came in a touch below what analysts had wanted. And second, the market has got greedy on AWS. Growth was terrific, but some analysts had penciled in even more. When you're expected to sprint, a fast jog looks like a stumble. And third, and this is the big one.