The surprise surge in profit was driven by Amazon's cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, and a fast-growing advertising division that is now a multi-billion dollar business. On a conference call with analysts Thursday, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky announced plans to help offset the rising costs of investments like original programming by raising the price of Amazon Prime. Amazon is raising the price of Prime to $119"We continue to increase the value of Prime," Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the call. Amazon has hit new milestones for its stock price, paying subscribers, cloud computing sales and even profit -- something which once seemed unthinkable for the company. Last quarter, Amazon topped $1 billion in profit for the first time in its history, adding to a long and impressive profit streak that has caused investors to swoon.

Source: CNN April 26, 2018 17:35 UTC