Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock jumped 2% after the company released its first-quarter earnings report last night after the closing bell. The online retailer posted $15.79 per share in earnings, smashing the consensus of $9.54 per share. Revenue came in at $108.52 billion versus the $104.47 billion that had been expected. Q1 2021 hedge fund letters, […]
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30, 2021
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This story originally appeared on ValueWalk
Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock jumped 2% after the company released its first-quarter earnings report last night after the closing bell. The online retailer posted $15.79 per share in earnings, smashing the consensus of $9.54 per share. Revenue came in at $108.52 billion versus the $104.47 billion that had been expected.
Q1 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Amazon earnings: the numbers
Amazon’s sales soared 44% year over year as the pandemic-driven surge of online shopping continued during the first quarter. The retail business wasn’t the only one that soared during the quarter. Amazon Web Services saw its revenue rise 32% year over year to $13.5 billion. “Other” revenue, which includes ad sales, jumped 77% year over year to $6.9 billion.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also provided details on how Prime Video has fared during the pandemic. He said in the earnings release that more than 175 million Prime members streamed shows and movies over the past year while streaming hours climbed more than 70% year over year. Amazon now has 200 million subscribers for its Prime service, which is an increase of 50 million from where it stood at the beginning of 2020.
Sales at the company’s brick-and-mortar stores, which include Whole Foods, Amazon Books and other physical stores, tumbled 16% to $3.9 billion, excluding delivery. Amazon’s first-quarter sales grew faster outside North America, as international revenue jumped 60% year over year, compared to North America’s 40% increase.
Amazon expects its second-quarter operating income to be between $4.5 billion and $8 billion, including $1.5 billion in coronavirus-related costs. That marks a decline in COVID-related costs year over year.
Guidance
According to CNBC, the online retailer’s guidance for the rest of the year indicates that it expects the surge in sales driven by the pandemic to continue. Amazon expects its sales to amount to between $110 billion and $116 billion for the second quarter, while analysts were projecting $108.6 billion before the first-quarter earnings release.
The e-commerce giant also announced that this year’s Prime Day would be in June instead of July, which should boost its second-quarter sales and year-over-year comparisons. Last year due to uncertainty related to the pandemic, Amazon postponed the event to October.
On the earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky explained that July is vacation month in many parts of the country, so June may be a better time for customers, sellers and vendors. The company is experimenting with different timing for its Prime Day this year.
Amazon is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders’ families.