If you want a digest of how many initiatives and activities Amazon is up to right now then the Amazon Q317 results will give you a really useful précis. You can find the Amazon release on the quarter here. Scroll down to the highlights section. But the basic news is that Amazon delivered amazing results that greatly exceeded analyst expectations. Shares in Amazon after hours have enjoyed a filip.
But here are some numbers:
– Revenue: $43.7 billion vs. $42.14 billion expected by analysts.
– EPS: 52 cents vs. 3 cents per share. That’s earnings per share and analysts expected Amazon to spend much more on investment this past quarter.
– Amazon Web Services revenue: $4.58 billion vs. $4.51 billion expected by analysts.
At the very core of much of this Amazon Q317 success, it would seem Alexa is critical. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said: “In the last month alone, we’ve launched five new Alexa-enabled devices, introduced Alexa in India, announced integration with BMW, surpassed 25,000 skills, integrated Alexa with Sonos speakers, taught Alexa to distinguish between two voices, and more. Because Alexa’s brain is in the AWS cloud, her new abilities are available to all Echo customers, not just those who buy a new device. And it’s working — customers have purchased tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices, given Echo devices over 100,000 5-star reviews, and active customers are up more than 5x since the same time last year. With thousands of developers and hardware makers building new Alexa skills and devices, the Alexa experience will continue to get even better.”
There really is no stopping Amazon. And the third quarter is supposed to be the crap one. What will they manage in Q4 with Black Friday and Christmas on the way?
11 Responses
Well there is a shocker. The vast majority of our own website sales have started coming through on Amazon Payments now also. My Alexa still does not understand me however.
Mind you eBay have colourful boxes now, so am sure they are on the fightback.
I always learn a new word in Dan’s pieces. 🙂
today’s tamebay is brought to you by the letter Q, number 317, and the word précis.
Amazon is becoming a beast and its a risk to many businesses including those who use their marketplace. A monopoly holder like Google/Amazon is a high risk to any business how do you derisk your business?
What other marketplaces in the UK do you guys sell on ? (apart from eBay)
I believe the government should set up some kind of body to regulate the monopoly and livelihood these marketplaces control.
Sounds like amazon are doing well. Which to be honest based on track record is to be expected.
Do not expect them to disappear any time soon.
eBay on the other hand, they can disappear as soon as possible.
When it does happen, the speed of its demise will be like no other shock of the online era. It’s coming, and it’s coming quick.
It’s easy for Amazon to make money when a technical issue has stopped them making disbursements to a significant number of sellers all around the world for the last week.
Think of the interest they’ll be getting on the millions of extra pounds that’ll be sitting in their bank !
Jef – ebay appear to be staying.
Forget the fluffy press release and look at the actual numbers.
Their cash from operating activities grew by $3.42 Bn over 12 months. They spent $29.96 Bn of it in investing activities, which included Jeff Bezos cashing in a bunch of his own shares. That’s a net loss of $26.54 Bn, which appears to have been covered by an increase in long term debt.
Their consolidated statement of operations (what smaller businesses would refer to as a P&L statement) shows them operating at insanely tight margins, with most of the growth coming from web services not retail, and a significant drop in nominal profit. The key numbers to pull out of their consolidated balance sheet are an increase in the last 12 months in long term debt and long term liabilities from $20.3 Bn to $43.5 Bn, most of it ploughed into property and equipment with low liquidity.
If this was any other business, I’d say it has the symptoms of a company over-extending itself and with significant cashflow risks. Perhaps it has some bearing on their failure to process disbursements for UK marketplace sellers for the last week or two.