Amazon grew strongly in the first quarter of the year and increased its benefit thanks to the profitability of its cloud computing business, associated with artificial intelligence fever, the good progress of electronic commerce sales and the contribution of other divisions. The company expects to continue growing at a good pace in the second quarter of the year, in the middle of the commercial war declared by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, against the entire world.
The billing of the electronic commerce giant between January and March was 155,667 million dollars (about 138,000 million euros to the current exchange rate), with a 9% increase over the same period of the previous year. The net profit shot 64%, to 17,127 million dollars, according to the figures communicated by the company to the United States Securities and Bag Commission (the SEC).
The company estimates that in the second quarter sales will be between 159,000 and 164,000 million dollars, with a growth of 7% to 11%, although it warns, as usual, of the high uncertainty. The operational benefit, meanwhile, will be between 13,000 and 17.5 billion dollars, compared to 14.7 billion of the same period of the previous year.
Amazon imports a good part of its products from China. The company had raised to break down the amount of tariffs in the price increases of the direct import division to consumers. The decision was not yet taken, but the White House mounted in anger when those plans transcended and said that it was a “hostile and political” act, since the Trump government tries to sustain the false theory that it is foreign countries that pay the tariffs and that those taxes do not affect consumers. The president himself called the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and the company ruled out that transparency exercise. “He fixed it very fast. It’s a good guy,” Trump de Bezos said after the call.
Although electronic commerce continues to contribute most of Amazon’s business, its Amazon Web Services (AWS), cloud computing division, is the most profitable. However, in the first quarter its growth was stopped at 17%, compared to 19% of the previous ones. They also contribute a good part of the benefits their advertising businesses, which grows 18%, those of the sale platform for third parties, the subscription and logistics.
The price of the company has fallen more than 10% so far this year due to the uncertainty generated by Trump’s commercial war, which has stopped the growth of the economy and consumption. This Thursday, the price has reacted downwards to the presentation of the results, with falls greater than 3%.
(Last minute news. There will be update shortly)
