Long-term investors shouldn't buy shares in a company because of performance in a single quarter. However, quarterly updates sometimes contain revealing clues about a corporation's investment thesis and long-term prospects.

Let's look at Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), the e-commerce giant that recently reported strong third-quarter results. The company's shares jumped on the news, and with good reason. Amazon is showing that, despite being one of the largest companies in the world, it still has plenty of room to grow and is an excellent buy-and-hold option.

In the third quarter, revenue increased by 11% year over year to $158.9 billion. The company's top-line growth isn't nearly as impressive as it once was, but that's bound to happen as a corporation grows and reaches Amazon's size.

More importantly, Amazon is sticking to the blueprint that made it so successful in the past 30 years. It was originally just an online bookseller that saw the vast opportunity in online commerce and took advantage of it.

In 2006, the company launched its cloud computing division, AWS, which is its most profitable unit.

Now, Amazon is diving headfirst into the artificial intelligence (AI) field. It offers various AI-related services and continues to introduce more to cater to the needs of its clients.

AI has been around, in some capacity, for a long time. But it recently reached an inflection point, putting it on a long-term growth path. Amazon is in an excellent position to benefit from that.

During the company's third-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Andy Jassy said, "AWS' AI business is a multibillion-dollar revenue run rate business that continues to grow at a triple-digit year-over-year percentage and is growing more than three times faster at this stage of its evolution as AWS itself grew, and we felt like AWS grew pretty quickly."

Imagine what Amazon's AI business will look like in two years if it keeps up this pace, or in five years, or 10. To emphasize the point, this is less about AI and more about the company's ability to identify and pounce on profitable growth opportunities.

There will be others, especially as its bottom line and free cash flow are impressive. The company's net income grew by 54.5% in the third quarter to $15.3 billion. Its free cash flow of $47.4 billion more than doubled compared to the year-ago period. Pursuing new opportunities often requires significant capital, and Amazon has plenty of it.