Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) reports second-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday, with the call at 5:00 p.m. ET.
Polymarket gives the company a 94% chance of beating estimates, having beaten or matched in 14 of the past 18 quarters. The livelier action is on Kalshi, where traders are betting on which words CEO Andy Jassy and his team will say.
Analysts expect earnings of $1.82 per share, up from $1.68 a year ago, on revenue of about $196.7 billion.
What Kalshi Predicts Jassy Will Say
“Tariff” leads the board at 95%.
New forced-labor tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners took effect Friday, replacing the temporary global tariff the administration imposed after the Supreme Court struck down its earlier duties.
"Trainium" is at 91%. Jassy says that, at scale, the custom AI chip could save Amazon tens of billions of dollars in annual capital expenditure.
Trailing-12-month free cash flow has collapsed 95% year over year to $1.2 billion from $25.9 billion, so even the first billion would help.
“Amazon Leo” is at 81%.
The satellite constellation is slated to launch commercially in the third quarter, and Amazon guided for a roughly $1 billion year-over-year increase in Leo-related costs this quarter.
“Anthropic” trades at 81%.
A $16.8 billion pre-tax gain on Amazon’s Anthropic investment flattered first-quarter net income, exceeding even the $14.2 billion AWS earned in quarterly operating profit.
The AI lab also committed in April to spend more than $100 billion on AWS over the next decade.
What Kalshi Predicts Jassy Will Skip
“Zoox / Robotaxi” trades at 43%.
Hours before Amazon’s results, Reuters reported that Zoox won the first U.S. approval for limited commercial deployment of robotaxis without steering wheels.
The decision could allow the Amazon unit to begin charging riders in San Francisco and Las Vegas, subject to local approvals.
“China” sits at 24%. The 71-point gap to “Tariff” says traders expect Jassy to discuss the tariffs without naming China.
“Layoff / Job Cuts” trades at 11%. Amazon has cut about 30,000 corporate jobs since October, the largest workforce reduction in its history. The company estimated roughly $1.8 billion in severance costs for the October round alone.
Jassy already gave his answer on the October call, telling analysts the cuts were cultural and “not even really AI-driven, not right now at least.”
Reading the Board
Amazon will almost certainly beat, but the question is what $200 billion of capex is buying. AWS grew 28% last quarter, its fastest in 15 quarters, and the backlog sits at $364 billion. Wall Street wants the growth number higher and the spending explained.
Alphabet couldn’t manage it last week. It beat, raised its capex forecast, and fell nearly 7%.
Kalshi and Benzinga have an existing data collaboration agreement.
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