Bezos-ian proportions... Minus the Bezos. Amazon just released its first earnings without Jeff Bezos at the helm. After handing over his empire to new CEO Andy Jassy, Bezos went to space — and Amazon kept being Amazon. The 'Zon just reported its third quarter in a row of $100B+ in sales. Jassy's inheriting a well-oiled money-making machine.
Your quarterly Primer... If there's one thing we've learned from this quarter's Big Tech earnings: online pandemic habits have stuck. In some cases, our scrolly-tappy ways have even ramped up. Amazon's quarterly revenue jumped 27% from last year to $113B — better than its mid-pandemic revenue. A few Prime highlights:
- Global Prime-ification: Prime is now available in 22 countries, and members shopped more this Prime Day than ever before (250M items sold).
- Gadgets FTW: Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote was the most-purchased product.
- Back-to-school splurge: Prime members bought 1M+ laptops, 600K backpacks, 220K Crayola products, and 40K calculators.
Corona comparisons are rough... Despite the ginormous $113B quarter, Amazon still missed sales expectations — and the stock plunged 7%. The 'Zon also predicted that sales growth will continue slowing in the current quarter. CFO Brian Olsavsky blames tough year-over-year comparisons: in the same quarter last year, Amazon doubled its profit as nearly every biz line benefited from the corona-conomy — from ecomm, to cloud computing, to Prime Video. When you're comparing to that, it's tough to keep growth accelerating.