Large numbers. (Loud noises.)

Amazon ran up $158.9 billion in sales during Q3, results released after the bell on Wall Street Thursday showed. That was ahead of expectations. Consensus was looking for $157.29 billon from Andy Jassy on the top-line.

Sales growth was 11% last quarter, up from Q2’s pace.

The guide looked a bit light. Taking the midpoint ($185 billion), sales growth would be 8.8% in Q4. The Street was looking for $186.36 billion in current quarter sales, or 9.6% growth.

I’m not sure I’d get too worked up over the ostensibly soft outlook: Amazon’s pretty good at guiding low enough that they can clear their own bar, but not so slow as to trigger a big rout in the shares. That doesn’t mean investors won’t punish the “low” guide, but… well, they’re not morons over there. This is Amazon we’re talking about.

The press release was the usual novella-length compendium of milestones, rollouts and “coming soon”s. Jassy’s excited about the holidays, and specifically about what Amazon has “in store” (no bricks or mortar, though) for customers. He also talked up all the great things the company’s accomplished over the last few months. He touted Amazon’s “biggest-ever Prime Big Deal Days,” for example. I don’t know what that is, but “biggest-ever Big” sounds pretty big! The new Kindles are “significantly outperforming” internal expectations, Jassy remarked, on the way to promising “so much more,” including “tens of millions of deals,” the NFL on Black Friday and “Election Day coverage with Brian Williams.” (I can hardly contain myself.)

Investors only care about one thing other than the current-quarter sales guide, and that’s AWS. Revenue there was $27.5 billion, up 19%. That was bang in line with consensus. It’s worth noting that ad sales were up 19% as well, to $14.33 billion.

Looking at the rest of the numbers, operating income of $17.4 billion looked like a big beat ($14.75 billion seen) and margin was 165bps ahead of consensus. EPS was $1.43, a mile above the $1.16 analysts expected.

Jassy teased “over 100 new cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities,” which the company will unveil late next month. Amazon expects operating income this quarter to be $18 billion at the midpoint. That’d be better than the Street expects.

All in all, Amazon appears to be managing the business well. The top-line print for last quarter and the holiday quarter revenue guide weren’t blowouts by any stretch, but the profitability metrics look pretty good, and AWS growth of 19% should “work.”

Meanwhile, at Apple, sales were $94.9 billion last quarter, up 6% YoY and comfortably ahead of estimates, although I suppose “comfortably” is in the eye of the beholder.

Apple, you’re reminded, returned to revenue growth in Q2. So, Q3 marks the beginning of a new “streak.”

For what it’s worth, $94.9 billion was a new September-quarter record. The focus, obviously, was on the new products, although they weren’t announced until late in the quarter. Tim Cook called them the company’s “best yet.” I don’t know about that, Tim. To me, “best” is relative not to last cycle’s models, but to consumers’ expectations from a company with a reputation for building magical devices. I haven’t seen any magic since Jobs “retired.”

But people (including me) are still buying it. Most of it, anyway. iPhone sales were $46.66 billion last quarter, better than the $45 billion consensus expected. Mac revenue of $7.74 billion was in line (exactly), iPad sales of $6.95 billion were a little short but not by enough to matter (~$50 million) and the same was true of Wearables ($9.04 billion versus $9.17 billion seen).

Greater China revenue was $15.03 billion, a miss. Notably, services revenue missed too. Not by a lot — $24.972 billion versus $25.27 billion expected — but you really want to see the momentum continue there, particularly if the best Apple can do in terms of new products is a set of hugely-expensive — and just plain huge — goggles.

Cook was happy about… well, about everything, as is his wont. Apple Intelligence is out now, and so’s the jury on it. I’ve heard mixed reviews. I guess it’s already on my phone, but I haven’t seen it, let alone purposefully interacted with it. Cook says it “sets a new standard for privacy in AI,” and promised it’ll “supercharge” the company’s product lineup heading into the holidays.

EPS at Apple was $0.97. That was far short of consensus, but the “miss” was down to one-off litigation in Europe. And Apple’s anyway giving plenty back. To stockowners. “Our record business performance during the September quarter… allow[ed] us to return over $29 billion to our shareholders,” Luca Maestri bragged.

Later, on the call, the company guided for low-to-middle single-digit sales growth for the holiday quarter, underwhelming the Street.