Amazon Cloud Business Accelerates as Stock Price Surges

Amazon's stock price surged 15.3% on Friday to $271.58, its best day in years, after the company released its Q2 earnings report.

The cloud segment of Amazon's business experienced its fifth consecutive quarter of acceleration, with AWS revenue rising 37% year over year to $42.2 billion.

Despite concerns about increased spending, the cloud unit earned $16.6 billion in operating income on that revenue, a margin of just over 39%, which is 650 basis points wider year over year.