Amazon surges on surprise profit
Cloud-computing business helps drive jump in revenue as web retailer matures
Amazon.com Inc. rose 9.8 per cent Friday after posting a surprise profit that showed investors the web retailer can make money when it puts the brakes on investments.
Amazon reported Thursday that second-quarter revenue rose 20 per cent to $23.2 billion (U.S.), helped by a fast-growing cloud-computing business and initiatives to lure more customers.
Net income was $92 million, or 19 cents a share. Analysts projected, on average, a loss of 14 cents on sales of $22.4 billion.
Chief executive officer Jeff Bezos is pushing the web retailer, which he founded two decades ago, beyond sales of books, electronics and household items as the company matures.
While Bezos has focused on pouring profits back into growing Amazon’s business, he has periodically pulled back on spending to demonstrate that Amazon can be profitable.
“They are showing investors that if they want to deliver profits, they can,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., who has the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock.
“Amazon is a dominant online retailer, well on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest retailers.”
The shares climbed to close at a record $529.42 in New York, leaving the stock up 71per cent this year. The advance pushed Amazon’s market value to about $248 billion, more than that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer.
Operating expenses grew slower than sales, rising 17 per cent to $22.7 billion, Seattle-based Amazon said. Spending on marketing and fulfillment centers were both unchanged as a percentage of sales compared with a year earlier, according to Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer.
The e-commerce pioneer is investing to lure more customers as competition intensifies. Wal-Mart is rolling out a new membership service to challenge Amazon Prime, which offers two-day shipping, TV shows, photo storage and other benefits for an annual fee.
Startup Jet.com Inc. officially debuted this week, following months of testing to give online deal-hunters in the U.S. an alternative to Amazon.
A day of sales on July 15 to mark Amazon’s 20th anniversary, which the company called Prime Day, exceeded expectations, the CFO said.
The promotion, designed to drive Prime membership signups, featured reduced prices on television sets, lawnmowers and other goods and helped to drive orders surpassing Black Friday, an annual U.S. sales event that kicks off the year-end holiday shopping season.
Amazon’s cloud-computing division, which offers web data storage and computing services and includes customers such as Pinterest Inc. and Netflix Inc., had sales of $1.82 billion, up 81 per cent from a year earlier. The Amazon Web Services Group reported a revenue gain of 49 per cent in the first quarter. The cloudcomputing effort has disrupted tra- ditional technology companies as customers buy less hardware and software, instead renting computers from Amazon.
Amazon forecast third-quarter revenue of $23.3 billion to $25.5 billion, compared with analysts’ average projection of $23.9 billion.
“We’ve had competition for 20 years now from some of the biggest names in retail and other areas,” Olsavsky said on a call. “We’re used to competition, but we focus on the customer . . . We’re happy with the results.”