AWS offers a lift to Amazon's Q3 profitability

Much of Amazon's sunny Thursday earnings report for the third quarter of 2015 can be traced back to its Web Services cloud division.

AWS brought in $2.09 billion in sales in the quarter ended Sept. 30, representing a jump of 78 percent over the same period last year. With an operating profit of $521 million -- up from just $98 million a year earlier -- the unit’s operating profit margin was 25 percent for the quarter, up from 21 percent in Q2 and 17 percent in Q1.

Overall, Amazon beat analyst expectations with $25.4 billion in net sales and a profit of $79 million, or 17 cents cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting a loss of 13 cents per share on sales of $24.91 billion.

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