Despite high inflation and concerns about the economy, the world’s largest online retailer Amazon started the new financial year with a significant increase in sales. In the first quarter, revenue grew by nine percent year-on-year to $127.4 billion, as Amazon announced on Thursday after the US stock market closed. Operating profit increased by around 30 percent to $4.8 billion. Significantly worse numbers had been expected on Wall Street. The stock rose more than 10 percent in after-hours trading.
The lucrative cloud business around the Amazon Web Services platform, which offers companies applications and storage space on the Internet, increased revenue by 16 percent to $21.4 billion. Analysts had expected a little less. The business targets for the current second quarter also exceeded market expectations. Amazon assumes group sales of between 127 billion and 133 billion dollars. According to the company, operating profit should be between $2.0 billion and $5.5 billion. (dpa)