Amazon Reports $88.9 Bn Revenue in Q2 as Online Shopping Soars

Net income for Amazon increased to $5.2 billion in Q2 compared with net income of $2.6 billion in Q2 2019.

Riding on surging online sales during the pandemic as people stayed home, Amazon reported solid second-quarter results, registering a 40 percent increase in net sales to a whopping $88.9 billion, compared with $63.4 billion in the same period last year.

Net income increased to $5.2 billion in the second quarter, compared with net income of $2.6 billion in second-quarter 2019, the company said in a statement on 30 June.

Amazon shares rose 5 percent in the after-hours trade.

The cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported revenues of $10.81 billion for the quarter, up 29 percent year over year,

"Customers are using AWS to lessen the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on families, communities, and businesses," said the company.

For its third quarter, Amazon said it expects net sales to be between $87 billion and $93 billion, or to grow between 24 percent and 33 percent compared with third-quarter 2019.

"Operating income is expected to be between $2.0 billion and $5.0 billion, compared with $3.2 billion in third-quarter 2019. This guidance assumes more than $2.0 billion of costs related to COVID-19," said the company.

“Third-party sales again grew faster this quarter than Amazon’s first-party sales. Even in this unpredictable time, we injected significant money into the economy this quarter, investing over $9 billion in capital projects, including fulfillment, transportation, and AWS,” Bezos informed.

Bezos said the company created over 175,000 new jobs since March and are in the process of bringing 125,000 of these employees into regular, full-time positions.

This earnings report was disclosed by Amazon only a day after the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos testified in front of the US Antitrust Committee on the company’s unfair policies against smaller sellers on its platform.

Also just recently, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s wealth rose by a record $13 billion in a single day on July 20, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (BBI).