Not everything went like clockwork for Amazon in the last quarter

Not everything went like clockwork for Amazon in the last quarter

San Francisco, 22.9. 2022
On the one hand, Amazon can shine with higher sales in the second quarter (from 119 to 121 billion euros) – and this despite negative factors inflation and a looming recession. On the other hand, however, this result is offset by a decline in profits – from 7. 7 to 3.3 billion dollars. This result was above analysts‘ expectations.
How was that possible, after all, the business had already deflated from the shopping boom on the Internet spurred by the pandemic? It was the subscription services. Their sales rose by 10 percent to 8.7 billion dollars. Despite price increases, the group managed to attract new customers to its Prime service with free shipping and streaming services, who generally spend significantly more money on the e-commerce platform than other users.
At the end of June, there was nevertheless a net loss of around two billion dollars. Behind this is the investment in electric carmaker Rivian- Amazon’s 1.82% stake was devalued by $3.9 billion. This makes the carmaker a burdening factor, as Amazon already had to accept a 7.6 billion dollar balance sheet value correction and red figures in the previous quarter.
In return, the important cloud business shone all the more. The flagship Amazon Web Services reported a one-third increase in revenue to $19.7 billion. The operating profit of the cloud platform increased by around 36 percent to 5.7 billion dollars. Amazon’s increasingly important online advertising business increased revenues by 18 percent to $8.8 billion.
Trouble now also looms in the case of the iRobot acquisition. Amazon wants to take over the manufacturer of vacuum cleaner robots for 1.7 billion dollars. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now examining whether Amazon is thereby restricting competition in the field of smart home devices. After all, in addition to the devices, customer data is also very valuable to Amazon.
For example, the takeover candidate’s smart vacuum robots can create digital maps of users‘ homes with the help of cameras, sensors and artificial intelligence.
Investigations of this kind take about a year at the FTC.