2023-04-27 23:24:55
AAfter a few difficult quarters, mazon has brought hope back to the stock market. With its quarterly figures presented on Thursday after the close of trading, the online retailer did better than expected. However, growth in its important division related to cloud computing has again weakened significantly. The financial markets evaluated the results positively, the share price temporarily rose by almost 8 percent in after-hours trading.
Amazon, along with a number of other tech companies, has been forced to cut jobs in a weakening market environment. The company even announced two rounds of layoffs in the first quarter. In January it was announced that 18,000 jobs would be cut, and in March it was said that a further 9,000 jobs would be lost. As stated in the quarterly report, Amazon had 1.465 million employees at the end of the quarter, a good 75,000 fewer than three months earlier. However, these figures also include part-time positions.
The two announced rounds of layoffs have hit different areas of the company. First of all, Amazon aimed the cuts at the core business in online trading and the human resources department, then it also affected activities such as the cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS) and thus one of the fastest growing and most profitable businesses in recent years.
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For detailed view
Overall, Amazon reported revenue growth of 9 percent to $127.5 billion for the first quarter. Analysts had expected an average of $ 124.6 billion. The company posted a net profit of $3.2 billion after posting a loss a year ago. However, these results provide little information about the operating business because they reflect significant changes in the value of Amazon’s stake in the electric car manufacturer Rivian. Adjusted earnings per share were above expectations, operating profit rose 30 percent to $4.8 billion.
For AWS, Amazon this time reported revenue growth of 16 percent to $21.4 billion. Three months ago, the group had reported an increase of 20 percent here, a year ago it was even 37 percent. CEO Andy Jassy said AWS customers have become “more cautious” in the current economic environment. Julian Skelly from the consulting firm Publicis Sapient called this downward trend “worrying”, especially since AWS is an above-average profitable business. Last quarter, the division’s operating profit was $5.1 billion. That exceeded operating profit for the group as a whole, so Amazon would have made losses without AWS.
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