Amazon Q2 2021 results are in, and they’re the last ones which reflect the performance of ex CEO Jeff Bezos, who quit the position in July to head to space, although he returned to earth 11 minutes later and is now ensconced as Amazon Executive Chairman, giving him time to pursue his other interests such as running a newspaper and building rockets. In reality this is equivalent to Jeff’s last school report and this means the person marking the score card is the new Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy:
“Over the past 18 months, our consumer business has been called on to deliver an unprecedented number of items, including PPE, food, and other products that helped communities around the world cope with the difficult circumstances of the pandemic. At the same time, AWS has helped so many businesses and governments maintain business continuity, and we’ve seen AWS growth reaccelerate as more companies bring forward plans to transform their businesses and move to the cloud. Thank you to all of our passionate, innovative, mission-driven employees around the world for continuing to stay focused on delivering for customers – I am very excited to work with you as we invent and build for the future.”
– Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO
Highlights are that in Jeff’s last quarter, Net sales increased 27% to $113.1 billion making it the third quarter on the bounce with over $100 billion in sales. This compares with $88.9 billion sales in second quarter 2020 which at the time we thought was pretty good.
Operating income increased to $7.7 billion in the second quarter, compared with $5.8 billion in second quarter 2020.
Net income increased to $7.8 billion in the second quarter, or $15.12 per diluted share, compared with $5.2 billion, or $10.30 per diluted share, in second quarter 2020.
Sadly analysts weren’t that chuffed with the stellar results detailed in Jeff’s last school report as they were below expectations, as was the outlook for the third quarter. Amazon explain this as this time last year Amazon growth was massively driven by the pandemic and it’s unreasonable to expect the same levels of growth as the world slowly exits from the pandemic as were seen when much of the world had just locked down.
