Amazon’s cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported $1.8 billion in revenue and $391 million in profit for the second quarter of 2015, allowing Amazon to record unexpected profit margins of $92 million across the entire company, and sending its stock temporarily spiraling to values above its brick-and-mortar rival Walmart.
Amazon overall reported $23.18 billion in revenue and $92 million in profit. Without the profitable AWS unit, the company would have made $21.38 billion in revenue and a lost of $199 million.
AWS has grown from an approximately $1 billion business in last year’s Q2, so it has posted a 80% year-over-year growth. Operating profit also grew from $77 million to $391 million over a year, so profit growth has been about 400%.
In its last quarter, AWS had revenue of $1.566 billion, so revenue growth has been about 15% quarter over quarter.
Amazon’s AWS business unit is reported to be the largest cloud computing provider and is used widely across startups as well as larger companies. AWS provides a number of cloud services, such as servers, storage and other services needed for companies to run the computing part of their business.
Amazon’s stock surged close to 16% at end of day trading, leaving the company valued at $227.9 billion in market cap, very close to Walmart’s market cap of $235.6 billion.
