The e-commerce giant reported net profit of $14.3 billion in the October-December 2021 period, double the amount reported a year earlier. This includes a “one-time pre-tax valuation gain of $11.8 billion, included in non-operating income from our common stock investment in Rivian Automotive,” the company said.
In detail, Amazon’s fourth-quarter revenue was $137.4 billion, up 9% year-on-year. But this result is lower than the expectations of analysts who expected 137.68 billion dollars. The group’s stock jumped 17% in post-close trading on Wall Street, after falling nearly 8% during the session as part of an unfavorable rotation to large technology stocks in their whole.
Amazon has also announced that the price of Prime subscription will increase in the United States, the e-commerce giant saying it wants to compensate for increases in delivery costs and wages. The monthly rate will therefore increase from 12.99 dollars to 14.99 dollars, and the annual membership from 119 to 139 dollars.
A turnover between 112 and 117 billion for the current quarter
With the increased reliance on e-commerce during the pandemic, the group has invested heavily in its operations to deal with disruptions related to the Omicron variant and routing issues. CEO Andy Jassy adds that the company was struggling with higher costs. “As expected over the holidays, we saw rising costs due to labor shortages and inflationary pressures, and these issues continued into the first quarter due to Omicron. Despite these short-term challenges, we remain optimistic and excited about the evolution of the business as it emerges from the pandemic. »
Andy Jassy was nevertheless optimistic about the company’s prospects. “When you combine how we’re recruiting and expanding our fulfillment network to deliver even faster delivery to more customers, AWS’ tremendous growth with 40% year-over-year growth ( and now $71 billion in revenue), the addition of brand new entertainment (…) and a plethora of new capabilities we are building in areas such as Alexa, Ring, Grocery, Pharmacy, Amazon Care, Kuiper and Zoox, there is a lot to look forward to in the months and years to come,” he says.
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud segment saw its quarterly revenue grow 40% year-on-year to $17.8 billion. In addition, detailing for the first time its advertising revenues, Amazon reported a rise of 32% to 9.7 billion dollars in the fourth quarter.
For the current quarter, the company is forecasting revenue of $112 billion to $117 billion, below the consensus forecast of $120.94 billion.