Still Amazin’

While many companies have been content merely to survive the pandemic unscathed, Amazon has grasped the opportunity to charge towards its ambition of being the everything store. Many have blamed the pandemic for disruptions to supply chains and made excuses about their delivery times, but Amazon has just ploughed on, refusing to let anything stand in its way and continuing to deliver a customer experience that is second to none, while pulling off a financial performance that has had Wall Street’s finest crying over their spreadsheets.

For the second quarter on the trot, Amazon has delivered revenues north of $100bn, and its earnings of $15.79 per share made a mockery of analysts’ expectations of $9.54. Overall sales were up 44% year on year, and the company gained 50-million Prime subscribers to hit 200-million of these biggest-spending, stickiest veterans of the sofa shopping battleground. Streaming hours on Prime Video were up 70% year on year, and the company has confirmed that Prime Day will take place in June, necessitating a hectic two days of bargain-hunting for its busy subscribers.

Amazon’s dedication to packing goods in surprisingly large boxes has had a material impact on the supply of used cardboard for recycling into packaging, and the price of a ton of used cardboard has flown up from

£10 in January 2020 to about £140. This is having more of an impact on smaller operators than it is on Amazon, and the only piece of negative news in Amazon’s results was a drop in sales in its physical stores such as Whole Foods supermarkets.

The company has delivered revenues north of $100bn for the second quarter on the trot