Amazon posted a profit of $10.4 billion for the first three months of the year, representing another quarter of growth that topped the start of 2023.
Amazon’s first-quarter financial numbers, revealed Tuesday afternoon, showed $143 billion in revenue, $10.4 billion in profit, and 98 cents per diluted share. Last year at this time, Amazon reported $127 billion in revenue, $3.2 billion in profit, and 31 cents per diluted share.
Amazon’s first-quarter earnings is consistent with the company’s net income of $10.6 billion recorded at the end of the previous fiscal year. “The theme is that growth is back,” Himanshu Jain, senior vice president and head of product at CommerceIQ, a software business that monitors online platforms like Amazon and Walmart, said in an interview before Amazon’s earnings announcement.
On Tuesday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cited the same factors that have contributed to Amazon’s growth in recent quarters, including faster delivery times for retail customers, Amazon’s expanding advertising business, and increased interest in cloud computing and artificial intelligence services among business consumers.
“It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward,” Jassy went on to say. Net sales for the first quarter of 2024 climbed 13% to $143.3 billion.
Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, saw its sales climb by 17% to $25 billion. Sales of Amazon’s advertising service grew 24% year on year to $11.8 billion but fell quarter on quarter. Amazon reported $14.6 billion in ad revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Operating income grew to $15.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024, from $4.8 billion in the same period the previous year. Amazon’s first-quarter net profits included a $2 billion loss on its investment in Rivian, an electric vehicle startup.