Amazon brought in $2 billion less than analysts expected, even with a second-quarter Prime Day

• Amazon reported its second-quarter earnings results on Thursday.
• The ecommerce giant surpassed analysts' projections for earnings but missed on revenue.
• Amazon also issued third-quarter guidance, anticipating net sales of up to $112 billion.

Amazon on Thursday posted mixed second-quarter earnings, missing on Wall Street's revenue expectations despite the annual Prime Day shopping holiday falling in June this year.

Here are the key numbers:

• Revenue: $113.08 billion, versus an expected $115.20 billion
• Earnings per share (EPS): $15.12 compared to an expected $12.30 per share

After postponing Prime Day in 2020 due to the pandemic, the annual shopping holiday returned to mid-year, taking place over two days beginning June 21. Amazon said customers purchased more than 250 million items over the two-day span, with the latest Fire TV Stick the most popular item sold, the company said.

Amazon called this year's Prime Day "the biggest two-day period ever for small and medium-sized businesses" on its stores worldwide.

AWS, Amazon's cloud unit, saw $14.8 billion in revenue in the second quarter, up from $10.8 billion during the same period of 2020.

"We've seen AWS growth reaccelerate as more companies bring forward plans to transform their businesses and move to the cloud," CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement, his first quarterly earnings after taking the helm from founder Jeff Bezos on July 5.

Overall, sales were up 27% from $88.9 billion during the second quarter 2020. Profits rose to $7.8 billion, compared to $5.2 billion posted in the second quarter of last year.

Amazon also issued third-quarter guidance, saying it's anticipating between $106 billion and $112 billion in sales, an increase of between 10% and 16% compared with the third-quarter 2020.