Amazon beats Street as profits, sales soar in Q3
Amazon reported a blow-out quarter with better-than-expected earnings and revenue.
The e-tail giant outperformed Wall Street predictions with net income of $9.9 billion in the third quarter, or $0.94 per diluted share, more than triple the net income of $2.9 billion, or $0.28 per diluted share, it reported in the third quarter of fiscal 2022. Analysts had expected earnings of $0.59 cents a share. The gains came as Amazon has been aggressively cutting costs for the past year.
Amazon said its quarterly profit includes gains from its investment in electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian Automotive.
Net sales totaled $143.1 billion, up 13% year-over-year and ahead of estimates for $141.5 billion. Among the highlights was Amazon's advertising services business, which jumped 26% from the same quarter a year ago, topping $12 billion. The company's cloud business, Amazon Web Services, rose 12% to $23.06 billion, slightly below the $23.20 billion analysts forecasted.
North America segment sales increased 11% year-over-year to $87.9 billion; while international segment sales increased 16% year-over-year to $32.1 billion, or increased 11% excluding changes in foreign exchange rates.The e-tailer also said its October Prime Big Deal Days promotion sold hundreds of millions of items worldwide.
“We had a strong third quarter as our cost to serve and speed of delivery in our stores business took another step forward, our AWS growth continued to stabilize, our advertising revenue grew robustly, and overall operating income and free cash flow rose significantly,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO.
“The benefits of moving from a single national fulfillment network in the U.S. to eight distinct regions are exceeding our optimistic expectations, and perhaps most importantly, putting us on pace to deliver the fastest delivery speeds for Prime customers in our 29-year history,” Jassy said. “With our 29th holiday shopping season, this is a particularly action-packed time of year at Amazon and we’re excited for what’s to come.”
Amazon ups holiday hiring, supply chain salaries
Amazon also recently announced it will hire 250,000 full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees in the U.S. this holiday season, 67% more than the e-commerce giant hired in preparation for the holidays in 2022 and 2021.
The company also said it is investing $1.3 billion this year toward pay increases for customer fulfillment and transportation employees, bringing the average hourly pay to $20.50, a more than 50% increase over five years and up 7.9% from the average pay of $19 a hour a year ago.