NEW YORK, Jan 30, 2026, 17:01 EST — After-hours
- Amazon.com, Inc. shares were down about 1% in late trading on Friday.
- The company has flagged 16,000 corporate job cuts and is pulling back from parts of its physical retail push.
- Investors are bracing for Feb. 5 results for clues on AWS demand and spending plans.
Amazon.com, Inc. shares dipped about 1% in after-hours trading on Friday, changing hands at $239.30. The move left the stock down $2.34 from the prior close.
The slide comes as investors sift a fast run of company moves heading into Amazon’s fourth-quarter results next week. Amazon has said it will host its earnings conference call on Feb. 5 after the U.S. market close. (Amazon)
It matters because the market is already touchy around big cloud names and their spending. “For those companies where expectations have become very, very lofty, the onus is going to be on them to deliver,” said Jim Baird of Plante Moran Financial Advisors, after a weak cloud showing from Microsoft pushed tech stocks around this week. Sid Vaidya at TD Wealth said investors have been getting a clear message that “capex” — capital spending on items like data centers and chips — is not easing, even as the Federal Reserve pauses its rate-cutting cycle. (Reuters)
Earlier this week, Amazon confirmed 16,000 corporate job cuts, completing a plan for roughly 30,000 since October, and said further reductions were still possible. It also said it was closing its remaining Amazon Fresh grocery stores and Amazon Go markets, and dropping the Amazon One biometric payments service. (Reuters)
In a note to employees, Beth Galetti said the changes were meant to strengthen the company by “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” She said most U.S.-based employees whose roles are affected would get 90 days to look for another job internally, with severance and other support if they do not land elsewhere. (Amazon News)
The rollout also got messy. Reuters reported Amazon appeared to alert some Amazon Web Services staff early, via an email that referred to the layoffs as “Project Dawn” and was signed by Colleen Aubrey. “Changes like this are hard on everyone,” Aubrey wrote in the email reviewed by Reuters. (Reuters)
On the retail pullback, Amazon has told users it plans to discontinue Amazon One in retail locations on June 3, 2026, after limited adoption, while keeping it available for certain healthcare check-ins for now. The company said customer data tied to the service would be deleted after the shutdown. (Business Insider)
AWS also logged a bout of service trouble on Thursday, flagging network connectivity issues that hit services including DynamoDB in its US-East-1 region. Its status update pointed to DNS resolution problems — the “Domain Name System,” essentially the internet’s address book — as it worked to restore normal operation. (AWS Health)
But the same two themes keep coming back for traders: can Amazon keep AWS growth steady, and what does it cost to get there. If cloud demand softens, or if spending and restructuring charges rise faster than revenue, the stock could take another leg down even on a decent headline profit.
Investors’ next hard catalyst is Amazon’s quarterly report on Thursday, Feb. 5, with the company expected to release results after the close. (Nasdaq)
