Amazon narrowly missed its revenue target, but blew its profit forecast out of the water. After years of leaning on its low-margin retail business, Bezos’ behemoth is finally capitalizing on high-margin businesses like AWS cloud services and advertising.
Amazon’s earnings results were a mixed bag…
A silk bag full of precious gems.
Amazon brought in $52.9B, just short of its $53.41 revenue goal. But the company’s $2.5B in profit more than doubled its $1.2B forecast.
Thanks to growth in a number of profitable industries and tightening its chokehold on e-commerce, this quarter’s profit was more than 12x the company’s profit this time last year.
Growing almost everywhere, Amazon is in a league of its own
Cloud services sales were up 49%, ad revenue was up 132%, and after buying Whole Foods and PillPack, Amazon plans on ramping up its activity in food and pharmacy delivery in coming quarters.
Given this growth, many people speculate that Bezos’ baby could become the first company to hit $1T, but Apple and Alphabet are close behind. But the race to your mailbox isn’t even close — and Amazon has already won.
Research shows 45% of US households are Prime members and Amazon accounts for 49.1% of ecommerce (eBay is next, with 6.6%). As Amazon swallows up new industries, it will hit the ground running thanks to its massive, existing customer base.
Amazon doesn’t need to be first in your heart…