Amazon Q1 sales rise 17%; cloud computing segment has fastest growth in 15 quarters
Amazon reported a strong first quarter with better-than-expected earnings and revenue.
The company also announced that it will move its annual Amazon Prime Day sales extravaganza from its traditional mid-July setting to unspecified dates in June. (The only other two times Prime Day occurred outside of July were 2020, when it was pushed to October due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021 when Amazon hosted the event in June as the economy was still in recovery from the pandemic.)
On the company's earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said that Amazon is now "the second-largest grocer in the U.S.” During the quarter, Amazon launched same-day delivery of pershiables to more than 2,300 communities.
“Perishables sales have grown over 40 times year over year (YoY) and make up nine of the top 10 most-ordered items for same-day delivery where the service is available,” Jassy noted.
Amazon's first-quarter performance was helped by strong growth in its cloud business, with its AWS (Amazon Web Services) segment’s revenue rising 28% year-over-year to $37.6 billion. Amazon said it was the segment's fastest growth in 15 quarters.
“AWS is growing 28% (our fastest growth in 15 quarters) on a very large base, our chips business topped a $20 billion revenue run rate (growing triple digits year-over-year),” Jassy said in the earnings statement.
Jassy added that Amazon's advertising business grew to over $70 billion in TTM revenue, and that unit growth in its stores reached 15%, the highest since the tail end of Covid lockdowns.
Income
Amazon's net income increased to $30.3 billion, or $2.78 per diluted share, in the quarter ended March 31, compared with $17.1 billion, or $1.59 per diluted share, in the year-ago period. Analysts had expected earnings per share of $1.64.
Operating income increased to $23.9 billion, compared with $18.4 billion in first quarter 2025. AWS segment operating income was $14.2 billion, compared with $11.5 billion in first quarter 2025.
Net sales increased 17% to $181.5 billion, topping analysts estimates of $177.3 billion. North America segment sales rose 12% year-over-year to $104.1 billion.
"Amazon’s results point to remarkably strong and resilient momentum across its core businesses, with accelerating growth in retail, cloud, and advertising surpassing expectations," commented Emarketer principal analyst Sky Canaves.
For its current quarter, Amazon said it expects sales to range between $194 billion and $199 billion, which is more than analysts were expecting.
In his statement, Jassy noted that Amazon hit exciting milestones with delivery speed (more than 1 billion items same-day or overnight in 2026.
"We’re making customers’ lives easier and better every day across all our businesses, and their response is driving significant growth,” he said.
"We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead, and I’m very optimistic about what’s ahead for our customers and Amazon," Jassy added.