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- Connor Quincy via Variety
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Amazon CEO Says Prime Video Is Profitable and Brings In Tens of Billions Annually
ReAmazon CEO Says Prime Video Is Profitable and Brings In Tens of Billions Annually
Andy Jassy said Prime Video is profitable and generates tens of billions of dollars a year, even as Amazon missed third-quarter earnings estimates and its stock fell.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company's third-quarter earnings call that Prime Video is profitable and generates “tens of billions of dollars” annually. The comments came as Amazon's shares fell after the ecommerce giant missed earnings estimates for the quarter and advertising revenue growth slowed.
Content spending at Prime Video grew 7 percent in the third quarter to $5.9 billion, according to figures highlighted in coverage of the call. Jassy presented the streaming business as one of the bright spots in a report that otherwise drew investor concern, particularly over the company's heavy spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure. That spending weighed on free cash flow, a measure investors watch closely as a sign of how much cash a company generates after investing in its operations.
The earnings call also drew attention to Amazon's retail operations. Jassy spoke at length about Amazon Web Services and artificial intelligence, but he also stressed the importance of progress in the company's store business. In his remarks, he signaled that the retail side of the company is not getting the recognition it deserves, a point that framed the quarter as a mix of strong areas and pressure points. Streaming and retail were both presented as sources of growth beyond the cloud and AI segments that dominated investor attention.
The quarter underscored the tension between Amazon's large-scale bets on AI and its more established businesses. The stock's decline reflected concern that heavy infrastructure investment is cutting into cash generation at a time when growth in advertising has slowed. Advertising is a key profit driver for both the company's streaming platform and its retail marketplace, so the slowdown matters across more than one part of the business.
Jassy's comments positioned Prime Video as a financially significant part of Amazon rather than a costly add-on to its membership program. Content spending continues to rise, and the company has signaled that it expects the video business to contribute materially to overall results. Whether that profitability can offset pressure from AI spending will be a central question as Amazon reports future quarters, and investors will be watching whether the streaming and store businesses can carry more of the company's growth as the infrastructure build-out continues.
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