Amazon reports 37 pc growth in sales, expects bumper holiday season

E-commerce behemoth Amazon has reported better-than-expected Q3 results in the pandemic times when people tend to shop more online, as net sales increased 37 percent to US$ 96.1 billion in the third quarter, compared with US$ 70 billion in the third quarter 2019.
Amazon said that the sales in the fourth quarter will be between US$ 112 billion and US$ 121 billion – a healthy growth from a year earlier.
Net income increased to US$ 6.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with net income of US$ 2.1 billion in third quarter 2019.
“We’re seeing more customers than ever shopping early for their holiday gifts, which is just one of the signs that this is going to be an unprecedented holiday season,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.
“Offering jobs with industry-leading pay and great healthcare, including to entry-level and front-line employees, is even more meaningful in a time like this, and we’re proud to have created over 400,000 jobs this year alone,” he said in a statement on Thursday.
The company’s cloud arm Amazon Web Services (AWS), generated sales of US$ 11.6 billion for the quarter, up 29 percent. The operating income US$ 3.54 billion for AWS topped estimates of US$ 3.45 billion.
AWS in September quarter announced significant customer momentum with new commitments and migrations, including leading payments technology company Global Payments, to manage issuer processing and handling of their approximately 27 billion transactions processed annually.
Amazon’s “other” category, primarily its advertising business, saw revenue rise 51 percent to US$ 5.4 billion.
Subscription services, including revenue from Prime memberships, jumped 33 percent to US$ 6.58 billion.
Amazon now has more than 1.12 million full-time employees across the globe, an increase of 50 percent year over year.