// Amazon posts sales of £102.1bn – 9% up compared to the same period last year
// Chief executive Andy Jassy said: “There’s a lot to like about how our teams are delivering for customers, particularly amidst an uncertain economy”
Amazon has posted sales of £102bn for the first three months of the year, 9% higher than in 2022 and above the £100bn predicted by analysts.
The ecommerce giant‘s shares rose 12%, bolstered by a forecast for second-quarter results roughly in line with investors’ targets, despite it being in the midst of aggressively cutting costs including axing 27,000 staff.
It was the company’s strongest quarterly profit since 2021, suggesting the world’s biggest online retailer has managed to turn around the business which has been exacerbated by a cost of living crisis.
“There’s a lot to like about how our teams are delivering for customers, particularly amidst an uncertain economy,” said Amazon boss Andy Jassy.
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Amazon also swung to a £2.6bn quarterly profit having made a £3bn loss in the same period of 2022.
Its advertising business, which has helped ease pressure on its online shopping division, grew by 23%.
”Our advertising business continues to deliver robust growth, largely due to our ongoing machine learning investments that help customers see relevant information when they engage with us, which in turn delivers unusually strong results for brands,” said Jassy.
The cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), saw profits fall to £4.1bn from £5.2bn as companies cut back on software amid fears about the health of the global economy.
Despite this, Jassy said: “We like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead.”
The figures followed results this week from rival tech giants including Google owner Alphabet and Microsoft.
Jassy said: “Our stores business is continuing to improve the cost to serve in our fulfillment network while increasing the speed with which we get products into the hands of customers. We expect to have our fastest Prime delivery speeds ever in 2023.
”While our AWS business navigates companies spending more cautiously in this macro environment, we continue to prioritise building long-term customer relationships both by helping customers save money and enabling them to more easily leverage technologies like large language models and generative AI with our uniquely cost-effective machine learning chips, managed large language models and AI code companion CodeWhisperer. We like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS and believe there’s much growth ahead.”
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