What you need to know about Amazon’s corporate layoffs
Amazon will lay off 14,000 employees as it invests in AI and robotic automation.
Amazon is scheduled to report quarterly results after the stock market closes on Thursday, Oct. 30, days after the company announced it would lay off 14,000 employees to expand its efforts in artificial intelligence.
Reuters initially reported that the number could reach 30,000.
In June, the company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said the company would reduce its workforce in an effort to increase the use of AI to perform tasks that should normally be done by humans. The cuts impact the company’s logistics and payments, video games, and cloud computing teams.
This is the second layoff at the company this year.
Amazon currently employs approximately 1.55 million people worldwide. The planned 14,000 job cuts represent 4% of the company’s 350,000 employees.
In its upcoming earnings release, the company will also need to allay investor concerns about Amazon Web Services (AWS), which experienced a massive outage on October 20 that lasted several hours and affected web services for high-profile customers such as Snapchat and Ring.
The company said the outage was caused by an issue at its data center in northern Virginia.
As you approach earnings, adjust in the following ways:
How to listen to Amazon’s financial report
Amazon is scheduled to report earnings after the stock market closes on Thursday, October 30th. The Company’s third quarter financial report will be posted on the Company’s Investor Relations website. Investors can also access the conference call from the website. The conference call is scheduled to be held at 5 p.m. ET.
What are Wall Street’s expectations?
Wall Street analysts expect the company to report earnings of $1.58 per share and revenue of $177.8 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. In the third quarter of last year, the company had EPS of $1.43 and revenue of $158.9 billion.
AWS is expected to generate $32.4 billion, which would be an 18% increase from the $27.5 billion in revenue reported at the same time last year.
Online sales are expected to reach $67 billion in the third quarter, with advertising revenue expected to be $17.3 billion.
What did Amazon say in its last earnings report?
In the second quarter, the company reported lower-than-expected operating profit and slower cloud revenue growth, falling short of Wall Street expectations.
The company said it expected third-quarter operating profit of $15.5 billion to $20.5 billion and revenue of $174 billion to $179.5 billion, according to Bloomberg.
What is Amazon’s stock price?
Amazon gained 0.46% on Wednesday, October 29th.
Michelle Del Rey is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Please contact mdelrey@usatoday.com.
