Amazon has announced another successful quarter. Total sales increased by 20% to $63.4bn in Q2 of 2019, compared with $52.9bn in the same quarter of 2018. Excluding the $814m unfavourable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales increased 21% compared with Q2 2018.
Operating income increased to $3.1bn, up from $3bn in the same quarter of 2018. Net income increased to $2.6bn for Q2 2019, an increase of 3.4% on Q2 2018.
Online sales increased by 14% year-on-year to $31bn. This could be attributed Amazon’s expansion of grocery delivery from Whole Foods Market and the introduction of one-day delivery.
“Customers are responding to Prime’s move to one-day delivery — we’ve received a lot of positive feedback and seen accelerating sales growth,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Free one-day delivery is now available to Prime members on more than ten million items, and we’re just getting started.”
North America remains the main contributor to sales with net sales totalling $38.7bn for Q2 2019. Operating income decreased compared to the same period in 2018 to $1.6bn from $1.8bn. International sales are continuing to grow too, with an increase of 12% to $16.3bn compared with Q2 2018. It still registered an operating loss of $601m. Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw net sales increase by 37.3% compared to Q2 2018, reaching $8.3bn. AWS operating income also increased by 29.2% to $2.1bn compared to $1.6bn in Q2 2018.
For the coming quarter, Amazon expects net sales to be between $66bn and $70bn, or to grow between 17% and 24% compared with Q3 2018. This guidance anticipates an unfavourable impact of approximately 30 basis points from foreign exchange rates. It expects operating income to decrease to between $2.1bn and $3.1bn, compared with $3.7bn in third quarter 2018.
Prime Day was once again the largest shopping event in Amazon history with more than 175m items being sold over the two days. This will reflect in the next quarter’s results.
Source: Amazon
