Amazon.com reported a very strong set of results for the second quarter, with revenues in-line with expectations but profit passing the USD 2 billion mark on the back of growth at AWS and North America. Revenues jumped 39 percent from the year before to USD 52.9 billion, while the net profit surged to 2.5 billion or USD 5.07 per diluted share, from 197 million or USD 0.40 per diluted share. The operating profit leaped to USD 3.0 billion from 628 million, widely passing guidance.
AWS (Amazon Web Services) continued its high growth trajectory, with revenues advancing to USD 6.105 billion from 4.100 billion the year before. The operating profit at the cloud operations almost doubled, to USD 1.642 billion form 916 million. Amazon operations in North America also contributed to the company’s high growth figures, with revenues climbing to USD 32.169 billion from 22.370 billion and the operating profit quadrupling to USD 1.835 billion from 436 million. At International, revenues lifted to USD 14.612 billion from 11.485 billion and the operating loss narrowed to USD 494 million from a loss the year before of 724 million.
The operating cash flow increased 22 percent to USD 21.8 billion for the trailing 12 months, while free cash flow lifted to USD 10.4 billion for the trailing 12 months, from 9.6 billion. The company ended the period with USD 20.536 billion in cash and equivalents.
CEO Jeff Bezos praised the Alexa voice service and its advance, saying the company wants people to be able to use the service wherever they are, and that tens of thousands of developers across over 150 countries are building new devices using Alexa. The number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled over the past year, with partnerships cut with Polk, Sonos, Jabra, ecobee, First Alert, Acer, HP, Lenovo and automakers including BMW, Ford and Toyota.
For the third quarter, the company is guiding for revenues up 23-31 percent to USD 54-57.5 billion, and an operating profit again tripling to USD 1.4-2.4 billion from 347 million.
