Cue the Ren & Stimpy horse: “No sir, I don’t like it.”

Amazon said after the bell on Thursday it spent nearly $80 billion on buildings and computer equipment last quarter, a staggering sum that’s guaranteed to raise eyebrows at a time when markets are nervous about runaway AI spending.

It’s hard to know what to say about that tally — $77.259 billion to be precise — other than to note it was ahead of consensus by $20 billion.

The trailing 12-month free cash flow metric the company reports accelerated sharply to the downside from -$7.604 billion in Q2 to -$42.357 billion in Q3.

There’s the capex chart, plotted along with the TTM FCF metric. It’s pretty hard on the eyes. On the bright (?) side (“I’m Ron Burgundy?”), the full-year capex guide was unchanged at $220 billion.

“Our AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working,” Andy Jassy insisted, in the color accompanying the release.

I suppose that depends on your definition of “working.” The proof’s in the cloud, and specifically in cloud growth. AWS revenue was $45.98 billion in Q3, up 39%, but just barely ahead of consensus. Strong as the numbers are, it’s hard for me to imagine the marginal character of the beat being enough to carry the day.

Overall revenue of $201.9 billion was a miss. Consensus wanted $202.3 billion.

The current-quarter guide tips $243.5 billion in holiday sales. I hope that’s just Jassy sandbagging. Because that too’s a miss. Consensus wants $244.5 billion.

Jassy said AWS growth will likely exceed 40% in 2027 and in 2028. That’s great, but again: The capex / cash flow bleed “thing,” while hardly unexpected, is gonna be a sore spot with this report. It didn’t help that online sales — which are, you know, an important part of the business at Amazon — barely rose.

Stating the obvious about the $95 billion YoY jump on the “purchases of property and equipment” line, Amazon said the increase “primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence.”