Amazon income more than tripled to $8.1bn
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has confirmed its sales have exceeded $100bn for the second quarter in succession as it continues to benefit from the pandemic.
With consumers across the world increasingly shopping online, streaming videos and working from home, as their behaviour has shifted during lockdowns, Amazon has reported net sales of $108.5bn for the first quarter of the year, up by 44% from the same period a year before.
Amazon’s income more than tripled to $8.1bn, as its share price rose by 3% to a record above $3,590 in after-hours trading.
“There is little to indicate a slow down in Amazon’s growth,” said Daniel Newman, analyst at Futurum Research. “Its businesses across the board, ecommerce, cloud, advertising, devices, are all seeing growth and I expect this to continue into the next quarter.”
Nearly 50% of Amazon’s operating income of $4.2bn came from its cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS’s revenue has grown by 32% year-on-year.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has said that he will be stepping down and instead will take on the roll of executive chair. Andy Jassy, chief executive of AWS, will replace Bezos, while the company gave no update on when the succession will take place.
Amazon is expecting its sales to continue too rise, even as lockdowns come to an end, as the company’s guidance suggests revenue somewhere between $110bn and $116bn for the current quarter.
Amazon will spend $1.5bn on coronavirus related procedures within its logistics, and the company believes its net income will be between $4.5bn and $8bn this quarter.
Prime Video has been used by 175m Prime members over the past year, with “streaming hours” up 70% year-on-year.
J. Stern & Co.’s Christopher Rossbach said of the record haul:
“Amazon has continued its extraordinary growth, with revenues well in excess of $100bn again this quarter, which equates to over $13,000 a second. This is another significant milestone as the company continues to break records, and with over 200m Prime households now, the company is entering a new paradigm.”
