Amazon turned to profits in the first quarter and beat Wall Street earnings and sales estimates with the e-commerce giant noting the contribution of an expanded home assortment led by a new Martha Stewart program.
Amazon topped a MarketBeat-published analyst consensus estimate of 22 cents on earnings and $124.57 on revenues.
Net sales increased 9% to $127.36 billion compared with $116.44 billion in the 2022 quarter. as product sales increased to $56.98 billion from $56.46 billion in the period year over year, the company reported. With a $2.4 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates excluded net sales gained 11% versus the year-earlier quarter. Operating income increased to $4.77 billion from $3.67 billion in the year-prior period.
North America segment sales increased 11% year-over-year to $76.88 billion and operating income was $898 million, compared with operating loss of $1.57 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
Among the first-quarter operational highlights, Amazon stated it increased selection in its U.S. online store with the addition of marquee beauty, home, and fashion brands such as Lancôme, Shiseido, World of Martha by Martha Stewart, Rent the Runway and Know Beauty by Vanessa Hudgens.
As to recent security initiatives, Amazon released its third annual Brand Protection Report highlighting the company’s efforts to protect customers, brands and selling partners from counterfeit products. The efforts in 2022 resulted in more seized products, criminal referrals and industry partnerships than ever , Amazon asserted. The report demonstrates how the company is stopping bad actors and making an impact beyond Amazon’s store, including by identifying, seizing, and appropriately disposing of more than six million counterfeit products, preventing them from reaching customers and being resold elsewhere in the global supply chain.
“There’s a lot to like about how our teams are delivering for customers, particularly amidst an uncertain economy,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. “Our Stores business is continuing to improve the cost to serve in our fulfillment network while increasing the speed with which we get products into the hands of customers. We expect to have our fastest Prime delivery speeds ever in 2023. Our advertising business continues to deliver robust growth, largely due to our ongoing machine learning investments that help customers see relevant information when they engage with us, which in turn delivers unusually strong results for brands.
Jassy continued, “While our AWS business navigates companies spending more cautiously in this macro environment, we continue to prioritize building long-term customer relationships both by helping customers save money and enabling them to more easily leverage technologies like large language models and generative AI with our uniquely cost-effective machine learning chips, managed large language models, and AI code companion CodeWhisperer. We like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead.”
