SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) – The world’s largest online mail order company Amazon started the new financial year with a significant increase in sales despite high inflation and economic concerns. In the first quarter, revenues 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. Wall Street forecasts were clearly exceeded. 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 were also above 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.
The first quarter was marked by major job cuts at Amazon. In March, the Internet giant announced that it would lay off a further 9,000 employees. At the beginning of the year, the group had already cut 18,000 of its more than 1.54 million jobs at the time. The wave of layoffs is intended to reduce costs, but initially cost money. About $470 million in severance costs were incurred last quarter, according to CFO Brian Olsavsky. Overall, the number of employees fell by ten percent to 1.47 million.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is moving forward in his efforts to reduce costs after spending offensive amid the pandemic online ordering boom. Operating expenses increased in the first quarter by just under nine percent – the lowest increase in at least ten years. The North American business made an operating profit of almost 900 million dollars and was in the black for the first time since 2021. A year ago, an operating loss of 1.6 billion dollars was incurred here./hbr/DP/he
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