Amazon stock advances as Microsoft, Alphabet results bring ‘positive reads’ for AWS

Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN were headed about 3% higher in premarket trading Wednesday after cloud-computing rivals Microsoft Corp. MSFT and Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL delivered what Roth MKM analyst Rohit Kulkarni deemed “better-than-feared” signals overnight. He saw “positive reads” for Amazon’s AWS business as Microsoft saw its Azure cloud computing business slow to 31% constant-currency growth in the March quarter from 38% growth in the December quarter but predicted less deceleration for the June quarter, with an expectation for 26% to 27% growth. Citi Research analyst Ronald Josey wrote that a “slower growth decel…