Amazon's net income jumps 50% amid cloud and ad boom
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The news: Amazon reported revenues of USD158.9 billion ($241.4 billion) for the three months ending September 30, up 11% year on year, and strong double-digit growth for its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services.
The numbers: Amazon's net income for the period was USD15.3 billion, over 50% higher than the USD9.8 billion it reported in the same quarter last year.
While most of Amazon's revenue is generated via its e-commerce platform — USD95 billion in the US alone — AWS remains its biggest source of profit. Of the USD27.4 billion the cloud computing arm brought in, USD10.4 billion represented operating income, versus the USD5.6 billion that fell to the bottom line from US e-commerce.
Crucially though, the advertising services on Amazon's e-commerce platforms grew 19% to USD14.3 billion. Just like Google Cloud is Alphabet's attempt to break the cloud duopoly of AWS and Microsoft, Amazon's fast-growing ad play is a move to wedge itself between Google and Meta in the digital ad market.
What they said: “As we get into the holiday season, we’re excited about what we have in store for customers,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO.
“We kicked off the holiday season with our biggest-ever Prime Big Deal Days and the launch of an all-new Kindle lineup that is significantly outperforming our expectations; and there’s so much more coming, from tens of millions of deals, to our NFL Black Friday game and Election Day coverage with Brian Williams on Prime Video, to over 100 new cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities that we’ll share at AWS re:Invent the week after Thanksgiving.”
The source: Amazon earnings release
