The rise of internet commerce and cloud business triggered Amazon’s profits last year up to 33,364 million dollars, an increase of more than 56% compared to the previous year, when 21,331 million were recorded. Amazon sales last year stood at 469,822 million dollars, 21.7% more compared to the 386,064 million registered in the twelve months of 2020.
The firm based in Seattle (Washington state, USA), which presented its quarterly accounts today, obtained a net profit per share of 65.96 dollars, compared to 42.64 achieved in the previous year. Amazon is one of the companies that have profited the most over the two years of the pandemic, thanks to the boost in online commerce derived from restrictions on mobility and the closure or reduction of capacity and hours of physical stores for several years. months. In 2021, the firm led by Andy Jassy increased its sales both in its main market, North America, with a rise of 18% to a turnover of 279,833 million, and in the rest of the world, where revenues grew by 22% to 127,787 million dollars.
For its part, industry-leading Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform grew revenue 37% up to 62,202 million. AWS is the company’s great bet for the future and its most profitable business, in addition to having undisputed dominance in the market, well above its biggest rivals, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud.
Apart from internet and cloud sales, Amazon also made huge profits through its investment in the electric vehicle company Rivian (almost 12,000 million in the last quarter, coinciding with its operation on the stock market). In addition, the company published for the first time detailed data on its advertising business (by which companies promote their products on the platform), which reported a profit of 9.7 billion dollars between October and December, a growth of 32% year-on-year.
Amazon is the third US company with the largest share of the online advertising market, only behind the two great dominators of the sector, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook). The Seattle firm took advantage of the presentation of results this Wednesday to reveal a price increase for the Prime subscription in the United States, which is now $12.99 per month and starting February 18 will be $14.99 per month for new members. Prime offers fast delivery services at no additional cost for products purchased through Amazon and access to an online music and video library.
In July of last year, Jeff Bezos, the founder of the company, left the position of CEO after 27 years at the helm of the company and was replaced by Andy Jassy, of his greatest confidence and who led AWS for years. “Despite the short-term challenges, we remain optimistic about the future and excited about the business now that we are coming out of the pandemic,” Jassy said when presenting the accounts. The CEO explained that the “challenges” are the shortage of workers in the United States and high inflation.
The good results presented by Amazon, even better than expected by analysts, encouraged investors on Wall Street, and the company’s shares soared 18% up to 3,270 dollars per share in electronic operations after the New York stock markets close.