Amazon warns of a slowdown at its crucial cloud-computing division, while U.S. stock futures edge down after a fresh batch of other corporate results. Focus will turn to the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge later today, but in the meantime traders are digesting major economic data out of Europe U.S. stocks pointed lower on Friday as investors weighed a series of corporate earnings, including results from technology giant Amazon. By 05:23 ET (09:23 GMT), the Dow futures contract was down 168 points of 0.50%, S&P 500 futures traded 20 points or 0.49% lower, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 51 points or 0.39%. Shares in Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) dropped more than 2% in after hours trading, reversing earlier gains. Meanwhile, chipmaker Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) predicted that its margins would improve in the second half of 2023, giving a boost to shares postmarked. Elsewhere, quarterly revenues at Snap (NYSE:SNAP) – the company behind photo-messaging app Snapchat – missed estimates following alterations to its advertising platform, sending shares into the red in extended trading. Image-sharing social media site Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) also saw its shares shed more than a tenth of their value after a slump in ad spending led to smaller-than-anticipated revenue growth in its second quarter. Gaming and media conglomerate Sony (NYSE:SONY) reported on Friday that it expects profits to decline from a record high in its current fiscal period because of weakness at its financial services business. Later today, oil majors Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) will be among the biggest names rounding out a busy week of corporate earnings. Amazon initially saw its stock rally following the release of its first quarter returns, which showed that revenue at its key cloud-computing unit Amazon Web Services – a major driver of the group’s overall profit – had grown by more than expected to $21.4 billion. Overall group net sales of $127.36 billion also beat estimates. But the gains reversed after Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky warned in a call with analysts that customers using AWS were reining spending due to “tough economic conditions.” As a result, sales growth rates in April were “about 500 basis points lower than what we saw in [the first quarter],” Olsavsky added. Analysts at Morgan Stanley noted that near-term growth prospects at AWS now look uncertain, although they remained positive about its prospects over a longer period of time.
