Pandemic Prize: Amazon's Q1 Sales Soar 44%

E-commerce giant Amazon released its first-quarter results on Thursday, reporting a 44 percent sales increase. The results blew analysts’ expectations out of the water. The Masters of the Universe say they expect their sales to continue to climb in the second quarter.

CNBC reports that Amazon shares climbed more than three percent in extended trading on Thursday and are up on Friday morning after the company released its first-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street expectations for both earnings and revenue.

Amazon reported earnings of $15.79 per share vs $9.54 per share expected. Amazon also enjoyed a revenue surge of 44 percent to $108.52 billion vs $104.47 billion expected. Amazon has seen a major surge in its online shopping business partly due to the coronavirus pandemic leading to many choosing to shop online rather than in-person.

Amazon’s guidance for the second quarter implies that it expects this success to continue, expecting to post revenue between $110 billion and $116 billion, which surpasses Wall Street’s projection of $108.6 billion.

Amazon has confirmed that its popular “Prime Day” sale will start in June of this year, which is likely to help year-over-year comparisons for revenue in the second quarter. Amazon’s annual two-day discount sale usually takes place in July but the company postponed the event to October last year due to pandemic-related uncertainty.

Discussing Prime Day timing, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky stated on a call with investors: “In many areas, July is vacation month, so it might be better for customers, sellers and vendors to experiment with a different time period. We believe that it might be better timing later in [the second quarter], so that’s what we’re testing this year.”

Amazon’s cloud-computing and advertising businesses also saw major success this year with Amazon Web Services seeing nets ales of $13.5 billion during the quarter, an increase of 32 percent year over year. Amazon does not directly release advertising sales but its “Other” revenue category grew by 77 percent year over year to $6.9 billion.

Pandemic Prize: Amazon’s Q1 Sales Soar 44%

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