Can Amazon’s Business Pay For Its Spending?
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Amazon.com (AMZN) directed $215 billion toward capital spending over the twelve months to September 2026. During the same twelve-month period three years earlier, the company spent $54.7 billion. Management said on its October 29 call that the latest quarter’s spending went mainly to AI and to AWS, its cloud business. So what share of Amazon’s sales do you think goes to that bill now?
How Big Is Amazon’s Spending Bill?
Over the last twelve months, capital spending consumed 27.0% of Amazon’s sales. That figure was 9.9% three years earlier. The bill itself is 3.9 times what it was then, and it continues to climb. In the quarter to September 2026, Amazon’s spending rose 120.1% from the same quarter a year earlier.
Can Amazon Pay For It?
During the quarter to September 2026, Amazon spent more than its business brought in. The bill consumed 182.1% of that cash, compared with 98.8% in the same quarter a year earlier. Here is how the last six quarters compare.
| Fiscal quarter | Capital spending | Cash the business brought in | Cash left over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 FY2025 (ended 2025-06-30) | $32.2 billion | $32.5 billion | $0.332 billion |
| Q3 FY2025 (ended 2025-09-30) | $35.1 billion | $35.5 billion | $0.430 billion |
| Q4 FY2025 (ended 2025-12-31) | $39.5 billion | $54.5 billion | $14.9 billion |
| Q1 FY2026 (ended 2026-03-31) | $44.2 billion | $26.0 billion | -$18.2 billion |
| Q2 FY2026 (ended 2026-06-30) | $54.2 billion | $45.4 billion | -$8.82 billion |
| Q3 FY2026 (ended 2026-09-30) | $77.3 billion | $42.4 billion | -$34.8 billion |
Each row is one fiscal quarter. Cash left over is the cash the business brought in minus the spending (free cash flow). The spending leaves out equipment taken on through leases.
A year earlier, the September quarter left a little cash over after the spending. This time it left a shortfall. That deficit was the largest of the six quarters, and the cash left over fell below zero in three of the last four quarters. A single quarter can swing with the timing of payments. Over the full twelve months, however, the bill still came to 127.9% of the cash the business brought in. Put plainly, Amazon’s business no longer pays for its spending.
Amazon still has cash to draw on: $114 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of September 2026, against $272 billion of debt. That debt was $135 billion a year earlier.
What Has The Spending Bought So Far?
Amazon’s sales grew 43.9% over the same three years. That pace was far slower than the bill.
Amazon spent $405 billion in total over those three years. Its business now brings in $96.6 billion more cash a year than it did three years earlier. At that level, the extra cash would take about 4.2 years to equal what was spent. Not all of that gain came from the spending, since sales and cash grow for other reasons too.
What Must Go Right For Amazon
Management says it is spending to support strong customer demand, above all at AWS, whose sales grew 39.3% from a year earlier in the quarter to September, its fastest growth in nearly five years. It expects about $220 billion of capital spending in 2026, mostly for AWS, and meaningfully more in 2027, with what it called “a clear line of sight to attractive financial returns.” Those are management’s expectations, not results. The plan uses management’s cash measure for the calendar year. That measure put the latest quarter’s spending at $75.9 billion. The figure to watch is the cash left after the spending each quarter, a shortfall that grew in the quarter to September. Amazon is expected to report results for the quarter to December 2026 in February 2027.
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