Amazon said yesterday that its Q1 net sales increased 23 percent to $35.7 billion in the first quarter, compared with $29.1 billion in first quarter 2016. Net income was $724 million in the first quarter, compared with net income of $513 million in first quarter 2016.
The Reuters analysis makes the point that "Amazon's revenue has soared in recent years as shopping has moved online and businesses have moved their computing operations to the cloud, where Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the biggest player. AWS accounts for a majority of Amazon's operating profit.
"Some investors worried that mounting competition from rival cloud providers like Microsoft Corp and price cuts at AWS would slow the company's momentum. Many also expected Amazon's staggering array of investments - from new warehouses, TV and movie production to research on artificial intelligence - to weigh on profits.
"But those fears proved unfounded for the first quarter."
However ... "Across the board, the company is stepping up investments from a year ago. It plans to build new warehouses and create more than 130,000 full-time and part-time jobs by mid-2018 to speed up delivery. It is racing to make its voice assistant Alexa, which competes with Apple Inc's Siri, a ubiquitous platform like Windows has been for desktop or Android has been for phones."
The Reuters analysis makes the point that "Amazon's revenue has soared in recent years as shopping has moved online and businesses have moved their computing operations to the cloud, where Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the biggest player. AWS accounts for a majority of Amazon's operating profit.
"Some investors worried that mounting competition from rival cloud providers like Microsoft Corp and price cuts at AWS would slow the company's momentum. Many also expected Amazon's staggering array of investments - from new warehouses, TV and movie production to research on artificial intelligence - to weigh on profits.
"But those fears proved unfounded for the first quarter."
However ... "Across the board, the company is stepping up investments from a year ago. It plans to build new warehouses and create more than 130,000 full-time and part-time jobs by mid-2018 to speed up delivery. It is racing to make its voice assistant Alexa, which competes with Apple Inc's Siri, a ubiquitous platform like Windows has been for desktop or Android has been for phones."
- KC's View:
