Amazon joins Big Tech's dark forecast for the rest of the year. It said next quarter's sales will be less than expected – and its stock just plummeted 17%

• Amazon's shares dropped almost 20% after the company forecasted lighter-than-expected Q4 sales.
• Amazon's third-quarter results came closer to analysts' expectations.

Amazon couldn't save Big Tech.

The ecommerce king's shares were down more than 13% after hours following the company's announcement that fourth-quarter sales will be well below the current Wall Street consensus.

Amazon said it expected sales for the upcoming holiday quarter of $140 billion to $148 billion, below analysts' view of $155.37 billion. It also said operating income would be between a wide range of breakeven and $4 billion, also under Street expectations at the midpoint.

The company's third-quarter results for the quarter ended September 30 were closer to what analysts were expecting: it posted operating income of $2.5 billion on sales growth of 15% year over year to $127.1 billion.

Amazon's Chief Financial Officer Brian T. Olsavsky noted in a call with reporters that as the third quarter progressed, Amazon saw moderating sales growth across several of its businesses. The company was also pushing up against increasing foreign currency headwinds.

Olsavsky said the company expects these impacts to persist throughout the fourth quarter.

In light of that, he said Amazon would be "taking actions to tighten our belt, including pausing hiring in certain businesses and winding down products and services."

When The Wall Street Journal's Sebastian Herrera pressed Olsavsky on whether the hiring freezes would extend beyond Amazon's retail sector, however, Olsavsky remained ambivalent.

"We are preparing for what could be a slower growth period. Like most companies, we are going very careful in our hiring, we're going to continue to make sure that we have, you know, strong funding for businesses like AWS and advertising. We're still early growth, and we need to support our customers and grow the business," he said.

"But there's other areas where, you know, we continue to look and say, you know, is the best use of our resources? Or should we redeploy to other areas?"

Amazon's report follows similar glum outlooks this week from Meta and Alphabet.

On Wednesday, Meta's stock dropped nearly 20% on the heels of a worse than expected third quarter earnings report. The company's third quarter income fell almost 52% from the same quarter last year.

Still, the company plans to accelerate spending on the metaverse in 2023, despite burning through almost $4 billion in this year's third quarter.

Alphabet also saw its shares drop of 7% after posting third quarter results on Wednesday. The company's advertising revenue fell by $2 billion from this year's second quarter, proving that the advertising market may be in hot water.