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Amazon sales surge to £102bn, beating expectations despite mass layoffs

Amazon

Amazon

Ecommerce giant Amazon has reported a 9% rise in year-on-year net sales to $127.4 billion (£102.1 billion), exceeding analysts predictions of £100 billion.

In the first quarter ended 31 March, operating income rose to $4.8 billion (£3.8 billion) from $3.7 billion (£3 billion), the company revealed.

It also stated net income sat at $3.2 billion (£2.6billion) in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $3.8 billion (£3 billion).

The figures follow Amazon axing around 27,000 jobs in a cost-cutting drive, as well as recently shutting Book Depository online shop.


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“There’s a lot to like about how our teams are delivering for customers, particularly amidst an uncertain economy,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said.

“Our stores business is continuing to improve the cost to serve in our fulfilment 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.”

Amazon’s online sales were also flat in the period at $51 billion (£41 billion), however the company revealed its advertising and cloud computing divisions did better than had been anticipated growing by 23%.

He added: ”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.”

Its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), saw profits fall to £4.1 billion from £5.2 billion as companies cut back on software, the company revealed.

”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.”

Image credit: Shutterstock

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