Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Results

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2023.

• Net sales increased 11% to $134.4 billion in the second quarter, compared with $121.2 billion in second quarter 2022. Excluding the $0.3 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 11% compared with second quarter 2022.
  • North America segment sales increased 11% year-over-year to $82.5 billion.
  • International segment sales increased 10% year-over-year to $29.7 billion.
  • AWS segment sales increased 12% year-over-year to $22.1 billion.
• Operating income increased to $7.7 billion in the second quarter, compared with $3.3 billion in second quarter 2022.
  • North America segment operating income was $3.2 billion, compared with an operating loss of $0.6 billion in second quarter 2022.
  • International segment operating loss was $0.9 billion, compared with an operating loss of $1.8 billion in second quarter 2022.
  • AWS segment operating income was $5.4 billion, compared with operating income of $5.7 billion in second quarter 2022.
• Net income was $6.7 billion in the second quarter, or $0.65 per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $2.0 billion, or $0.20 per diluted share, in second quarter 2022.
  • Second quarter 2023 net income includes a pre-tax valuation gain of $0.2 billion included in non-operating expense from the common stock investment in Rivian Automotive, Inc., compared to a pre-tax valuation loss of $3.9 billion from the investment in second quarter 2022.
• Operating cash flow increased 74% to $61.8 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $35.6 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2022.
• Free cash flow improved to an inflow of $7.9 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an outflow of $23.5 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2022.
• Free cash flow less principal repayments of finance leases and financing obligations improved to an inflow of $1.9 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an outflow of $33.5 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2022.
• Free cash flow less equipment finance leases and principal repayments of all other finance leases and financing obligations improved to an inflow of $6.7 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an outflow of $26.1 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2022.

“It was another strong quarter of progress for Amazon,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO. “We continued lowering our cost to serve in our fulfillment network, while also providing Prime customers with the fastest delivery speeds we’ve ever recorded. Our AWS growth stabilized as customers started shifting from cost optimization to new workload deployment, and AWS has continued to add to its meaningful leadership position in the cloud with a slew of generative AI releases that make it much easier and more cost-effective for companies to train and run models (Trainium and Inferentia chips), customize Large Language Models to build generative AI applications and agents (Bedrock), and write code much more efficiently with CodeWhisperer. We’re also continuing to see strong demand for our advertising services as the team keeps innovating for brands, including the ramp up for Thursday Night Football with the ability for advertisers to tailor their spots by audience and create interactive experiences for consumers. We remain excited about what lies ahead for customers and the company.”

Highlights

Obsessing over the customer experience

Amazon obsesses over how to make customers’ lives better and easier every day. This is true for consumers, sellers, brands, developers, enterprises, and creators. For example, Amazon:

• Delivered its largest selection of products to U.S. Prime members at the fastest speeds ever in the quarter. The company now offers U.S. Prime members free Same-Day or One-Day Delivery on tens of millions of the most popular items. Across the top 60 largest U.S. metro areas, more than half of Prime member orders arrived the same or next day in the quarter. So far this year, Amazon has delivered more than 1.8 billion units to U.S. Prime members the same or next day—nearly four times the number of units delivered at those speeds by this point in 2019.
• Held the biggest Prime Day event ever on July 11-12, in the third quarter, as Prime members worldwide purchased more than 375 million items and saved more than $2.5 billion. This year, Amazon offered more deals than any past Prime Day, with Home, Fashion, and Beauty among the top-selling deal categories. This was the largest Prime Day ever for Amazon’s independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses, and the first where U.S.-based Prime members could shop deals directly from merchant sites using Buy with Prime.
• Increased selection in the U.S. Amazon store. Amazon added new beauty and fashion brands, including D’Amelio Footwear, Dyson hair care, IT Cosmetics, Ralph Lauren Fragrances, and Urban Decay, and extended its collaboration with Victoria’s Secret. This marks the first time Victoria’s Secret lingerie and apparel are available through a retail partner in North America. Amazon also expanded its selection of grocery items from brands such as General Mills and Coca-Cola.
• Announced Amazon Business is one of our fastest growing offerings, with a $35 billion annualized gross sales run rate and serving more than 6 million customers. Amazon Business allows businesses, municipalities, and organizations to procure products like office supplies and other bulk items easily and at discounted prices.
• Enabled customers worldwide to save more than $1 billion in the last 12 months through Subscribe & Save, a program that helps customers save time and money on regularly scheduled deliveries. Customers select their preferred delivery frequency for eligible products and can cancel or change their subscription at any time. The program has tens of millions of global subscribers with hundreds of millions of subscriptions.
• Announced that Amazon Day deliveries, which give Prime members the ability to choose a designated day of the week that makes sense for them to receive their orders, saved 136 million boxes in 2022. On top of making deliveries work for customers’ personal schedules, this free Prime benefit uses 30% fewer boxes on average.
• Released Amazon’s annual U.S. Small Business Empowerment Report for 2022, which detailed that more than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store came from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses. U.S.-based independent sellers sold more than 4.1 billion products and averaged more than $230,000 in sales. Amazon also announced a Small Business Search filter, which helps customers easily discover and shop for products from small businesses and artisans while shopping in Amazon’s store.
• Marked the 10th anniversary of Amazon.in and announced that Amazon India has enabled cumulative ecommerce exports of over $7 billion. By 2025, Amazon India has a goal to enable cumulative ecommerce exports of $20 billion, digitize 10 million small businesses, and create 2 million jobs in India.
• Premiered AIR, which launched in more theaters worldwide than any previous Amazon Original film. The film subsequently debuted on Prime Video and ranked No. 3 on Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 list during the first three days of its release. The company also premiered additional Amazon Original films and series including the final seasons of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; the global spy thriller Citadel, which was the No. 1 title on Prime Video in nearly 200 countries and territories during its premiere weekend; and Emmy-nominated Jury Duty, which was the No. 1 title on Freevee during the month it premiered and delivered the highest number of viewers in the U.S. on Freevee in a single month.
• Earned 68 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including three nominations in the Outstanding Comedy Series category for Prime Video’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Freevee’s Jury Duty, and MGM’s Wednesday. Jury Duty became the first advertising-based video-on-demand series nominated in a major Emmy category, while The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel became the most nominated streaming comedy in Emmy history with 80 nominations over its five seasons. Daisy Jones & The Six also earned nine nominations and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power earned six nominations.
• Grew Prime Video’s international slate of content with more than 40 new local Amazon Originals and live sporting events. Medellín (France) and My Fault (Spain) became the most watched non-English-language local Original titles in Prime Video history outside of their home territories. New global programming also included Deadloch (Australia), Caravana das Drags (Brazil), The Gryphon (Germany), Dahaad (India), Takeshi’s Castle (Japan), De Viaje con los Derbez Season Three (Mexico), and Gangs of Lagos (Nigeria).
• Launched Amazon MGM Studios Distribution to license Amazon Original and MGM library content to third parties after debuting on Prime Video. This will include movies and TV series, such as Coming 2 America and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, among others. Titles available cover a variety of highly marketable formats and genres with distribution rights available.
• Partnered with Pinterest to display ads on its website for products sold in Amazon’s store, where over 463 million people go each month to find recipes, home, and style inspiration. As Pinterest’s first partner for third-party ads, Amazon will make it easier for customers to discover and buy relevant products on Amazon and provide value for brands and advertisers.
• Announced new commitments and migrations from AWS customers.
  • Omnicom, a global marketing and communications company, will use AWS generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) and machine learning services, including Amazon Bedrock and Amazon EC2 Trn1n instances powered by AWS Trainium chips, to help accelerate advertising campaign development, including automating activities such as developing creative briefs, media plans, ad creative, audience segmentation, and performance measurement.
  • Royal Philips will use Amazon Bedrock to create a generative AI application that will provide clinical decision support, help enable more accurate diagnoses, and automate administrative tasks.
  • 3M Health Information Systems is using AWS machine learning and generative AI services, including Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Comprehend Medical, and Amazon Transcribe Medical, to accelerate AI innovation in clinical documentation.
  • Old Mutual, an African financial services group, migrated its information technology infrastructure to AWS to help decrease financial transaction processing time by two-thirds and reduce downtime by 50%, as well as leverage AWS machine learning and generative AI services to generate real-time, personalized financial forecasting and recommendations for customers.
  • Experian named AWS as its preferred cloud provider to power its multiyear information technology modernization initiative.
  • Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria will use AWS analytics and machine learning to transform its internal processes, improve risk management, drive growth, and provide innovative solutions for its customers.
  • Allen Institute is working with AWS to build a first-of-its-kind knowledge hub to advance treatment for brain disorders.
  • Sumitomo Corporation, a global trading and investment company, selected AWS to modernize its SAP service and drive business insights across its 900 subsidiaries.
  • KB Bank in South Korea reduced its operating costs by 20% using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Amazon Aurora, and Amazon CloudWatch, among other AWS services, to provide 70 key financial services to the bank’s 11 million monthly active users.
  • Acciona, a Spanish infrastructure and renewable energy company, completed the migration of its enterprise resource planning workloads and other core business applications to AWS, resulting in increased data availability and enhanced security.
  • HSBC launched an AI-powered index that uses AWS machine learning services to analyze and learn from data thousands of times faster than humans, enabling the index to automatically adapt its approach as market dynamics change and new information becomes available.
• AWS continued to expand its infrastructure footprint to meet customer demand, launching AWS Local Zones in Auckland, New Zealand, and Manila, Philippines, and an Amazon CloudFront location in Nigeria.

Inventing on behalf of customers

Amazon is driven by a passion for invention across all of its business areas. The company builds new products and services that customers ask for, and also invents new ones that customers didn’t know they wanted but make their lives or businesses better in some meaningful way. For example, Amazon:

• Announced new AWS technologies and capabilities that help customers of all sizes take advantage of generative AI, improve productivity, and enhance their security posture. These include:
  • More choice for Amazon Bedrock customers with the addition of Cohere as a foundation model provider and the latest foundation models from Anthropic and Stability AI.
  • Agents for Amazon Bedrock, a capability that makes it easier for developers to create generative-AI based applications that can complete complex tasks and deliver customized, up-to-date answers based on proprietary data.
  • AWS HealthScribe, a new HIPAA-eligible service for healthcare software providers that uses speech recognition and generative AI to automatically create preliminary clinical documentation from patient-clinician conversations.
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) P5 instances, the latest generation instances optimized for generative AI and HPC, powered by NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs.
  • AWS AppFabric, a service that helps IT and security teams more easily manage and secure applications.
  • The general availability of Amazon Security Lake, which centralizes security data from AWS, on-premises, and other cloud environments, into a purpose-built data lake. This gives customers broad visibility to investigate and respond to security events.
  • New capabilities for Amazon GuardDuty, AWS’s threat detection service that helps protect customers from the latest threats using machine learning, anomaly detection, and integrated threat intelligence. New capabilities include new container runtime protection for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), extended coverage for data stored in Amazon Aurora, and support for serverless applications in AWS Lambda.
  • Amazon Aurora I/O-Optimized, a new configuration for Amazon Aurora (AWS’s high-performance, fully-managed relational database service) that offers improved price performance and predictable pricing for customers with input/output (I/O)-intensive applications.
  • The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center to help customers successfully build and deploy generative AI solutions. AWS is investing $100 million in the program, which will connect AWS AI and machine learning experts with customers around the globe to help them envision, design, and launch new generative AI products, services, and processes.
• Introduced new Echo devices to give customers more choices for how to access Alexa. Echo Pop features a new hardware design with a front-facing directional speaker; Echo Show 5 features a redesigned speaker and new space-themed design for the Echo Show 5 Kids; and wireless Echo Buds deliver high-quality audio and access to Alexa on the go. To date, Amazon has sold more than half a billion Alexa-enabled devices globally.
• Expanded the Amazon Fire tablet family with the Fire Max 11, Amazon’s biggest and most powerful tablet with an 11-inch display, durable and eco-friendly design, processor that’s almost 50% faster than any other Amazon tablet, 14 hours of battery life, fingerprint recognition, and Alexa integration.
• Expanded offerings of Alexa Smart Properties—which delivers Alexa experiences in hotels, vacation rentals, apartments, and other properties—to include Atria Management Company, which is bringing Alexa to its senior living facilities across the U.S., and Circa Resort & Casino, which is adding Alexa to all of its hotel rooms in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• Announced Fire TV Channels, a free ad-supported service that offers Fire TV customers access to content from over 400 providers like NHL, Xbox, and TMZ. Customers can watch live, on-demand, and short-form content in categories such as news, sports, music videos, entertainment, food and cooking, video games, and travel. Fire TV Channels brings together premium free content that spans diverse customer interests from a growing list of household names like ABC News, CBS Sports HQ, FOX Sports, Major League Baseball, NBC News Now, Martha Stewart, and America’s Test Kitchen.
• Introduced new, more advanced machine learning models to help advertisers reach previously unaddressable audiences with Amazon Ads. The new machine learning models analyze a range of signals to help advertisers predict and reach highly relevant audiences with optimal cost-efficiency, which is critical to reaching desired audiences as the advertising industry moves away from third-party cookies. Performance improvements include an increase in click-through rate, an increase in return on ad spend, and a decrease in cost per impression.
• Launched Amazon Hub Delivery in the U.S. In this flexible delivery program, Amazon partners with local businesses, such as florists or dry cleaners, to deliver packages for Amazon. Partners receive packages each morning and can make deliveries when it works best for their schedule. Amazon’s goal is to onboard 2,500 partners in 23 states by the end of 2023.

Supporting employees, delivery service partners, communities, and the environment

In addition to its focus on customers, Amazon strives to make every day better for its employees and delivery service partners. Amazon also believes that success and scale bring broad responsibility to help the planet, future generations, and local communities in which the company has a significant presence. For example, the company:

• Was named the top corporate giver in the Puget Sound metro region by the Puget Sound Business Journal and in the Washington, D.C., metro region by The Washington Business Journal. Amazon was recognized for donations to more than 300 local organizations, supporting equity in education, affordable housing, and regional economic development.
• Doubled the capacity of Amazon’s Disaster Relief Hub in Atlanta, Georgia, where 2.4 million relief items were pre-positioned ahead of the 2023 hurricane season. Items are distributed in the wake of natural disasters to nonprofits and other aid partners that quickly help communities impacted by hurricanes or other disasters. Amazon also launched a Disaster Relief Hub in Japan, bringing Amazon’s global total number of Disaster Relief hubs to five.
• Awarded 400 scholarships for students from underserved and underrepresented communities to attend a U.S. college or university through Amazon Future Engineer, the company’s computer science education program. Since launching the program five years ago, Amazon has awarded $38 million in scholarships to 950 U.S. students who are also granted paid internships at Amazon.
• Committed to hire at least 5,000 displaced refugees in Europe by 2026 and expanded Amazon’s Welcome Door program to Australia, Germany, and Poland. The program, which launched in 2022 in the U.S., provides resources and support to refugee and humanitarian-based immigrant employees.
• Announced that in 2022 in North America, more than 7 million products were shipped without additional Amazon packaging. This is part of the company’s efforts to reduce excess packaging for customer orders without compromising delivery speed or product care with Amazon’s Ship In Own Container program, where items are shipped without additional packaging.
• Announced the global expansion of Amazon’s Cancer Advocacy, Resources, Education, and Support (CARES) program by the end of 2023 for all Amazon employees and family members with cancer. CARES helps alleviate stress related to working while sick and helps with accessing the best possible care, benefits management, health system navigation, appointment scheduling, paperwork, and more. The program started in 2022 and operates in 23 countries.
• Opened Metropolitan Park (“Met Park”), the first phase of Amazon’s second headquarters, in Arlington, Virginia. The 2.1 million-square-foot development includes over 50,000 square feet of retail space that prioritizes local minority- and women-owned businesses, protected bike lanes, over 2.5 acres of public park space, and will operate with zero carbon emissions. Other features include low-carbon concrete, water capture and reuse, and landscaped roofs where plantings will reduce buildings’ energy consumption.
• Ranked No. 1 on LinkedIn’s Top Companies, an annual list of the most sought-after places to work and grow a career in the U.S., Japan, and Spain; No. 1 on the Harvard CAPS Harris Poll of Most Favorable Institutions, ahead of all other companies and government institutions, including the U.S. military; No. 3 on Boston Consulting Group’s annual Most Innovative Companies report; and No. 3 on Morning Consult’s Most Trusted Brands list. Amazon also ranked in the top 10 for the 15th consecutive year on the Axios Harris Poll 100, an annual ranking of the reputation of the most visible companies in America.

Financial Guidance

The following forward-looking statements reflect Amazon.com’s expectations as of August 3, 2023, and are subject to substantial uncertainty. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic and geopolitical conditions and customer demand and spending (including the impact of recessionary fears), inflation, interest rates, regional labor market constraints, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet, online commerce, and cloud services, and the various factors detailed below.

Third Quarter 2023 Guidance

• Net sales are expected to be between $138.0 billion and $143.0 billion, or to grow between 9% and 13% compared with third quarter 2022. This guidance anticipates a favorable impact of approximately 120 basis points from foreign exchange rates.
• Operating income is expected to be between $5.5 billion and $8.5 billion, compared with $2.5 billion in third quarter 2022.
• This guidance assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded.

A conference call will be webcast live today at 2:30 p.m. PT/5:30 p.m. ET, and will be available for at least three months at amazon.com/ir. This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the Company’s financial and operating results.

These forward-looking statements are inherently difficult to predict. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially for a variety of reasons, including, in addition to the factors discussed above, the amount that Amazon.com invests in new business opportunities and the timing of those investments, the mix of products and services sold to customers, the mix of net sales derived from products as compared with services, the extent to which we owe income or other taxes, competition, management of growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, international growth and expansion, the outcomes of claims, litigation, government investigations, and other proceedings, fulfillment, sortation, delivery, and data center optimization, risks of inventory management, variability in demand, the degree to which the Company enters into, maintains, and develops commercial agreements, proposed and completed acquisitions and strategic transactions, payments risks, and risks of fulfillment throughput and productivity. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services, and technologies, system interruptions, government regulation and taxation, and fraud. In addition, global economic and geopolitical conditions and additional or unforeseen circumstances, developments, or events may give rise to or amplify many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

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About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.