Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock rose 7.35% (As on February 2, 11:18:32 AM UTC-4, Source: Google Finance) after the company reported strong sales and gave an operating income outlook that surpassed estimates, on the back of unrelenting cost-cutting and focus on services that make money is reshaping the once free-spending company. Operating income increased to $13.2 billion, while analysts, on average, projected $10.5 billion. The company delivered net income of $10.6 billion, up from just $300 million one year ago. Amazon is also making efforts to bring generative AI to consumers. Earlier today, it launched a new generative AI shopping assistant called Rufus, which is now being tested with a small subset of users in the U.S. Rufus, the company explained, is designed to answer questions about various products listed for sale on Amazon. The AI model that powers Rufus was reportedly trained on the company’s own product catalog data, plus shopper reviews and content from its Customer Questions & Answers section.

Further, the other major contributor to Amazon’s bottom line is its advertising business, which saw sales grow by an impressive 27% from a year earlier to $14.7 billion. Last month, the company rolled out new ads on its Prime Video service

AMZN in the fourth quarter of FY 23 has reported the adjusted earnings per share of $1, beating the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted earnings per share of 80 cents. The company had reported the adjusted revenue growth of 14 percent to $170 billion in the fourth quarter of FY 23, beating the analysts’ estimates for revenue of $166.2 billion. Amazon’s cloud computing business unit, Amazon Web Services Inc., was a strong performer as always, delivering revenue of $24.2 billion, up 13% from a year earlier and in line with Wall Street’s targets. It’s a slight improvement on the previous quarter, when revenue grew by 12%, but slower than a year ago, when AWS sales grew by 20%.

Operating income in the period ending in March will be $8 billion to $12 billion on sales of as much as $143.5 billion. Analysts, on average, estimated profit of $9.12 billion on sales of $142 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Looking to the next quarter, Amazon officials said they’re expecting sales of between $138 billion and $143.5 billion, which would represent growth of between 8% and 13%. While that’s less than the quarter just gone, it’s still much better than most had hoped for, with Wall Street’s analysts predicting first-quarter revenue of just $142.1 billion.