Amazon has become one of the major brands associated with how the consumer masses view life under lockdown: the platform helps you to buy everything from soup to snacks, from books to baking pans with all of your sourdoughs; and it gives you countless opportunities to keep amused with its entertainment channels. Yet it can also be a source of immense disappointment if you are unable to book distribution slots or face an army of vendors seeking to pay you for hot items such as masks or toilet paper.
The business today posted results in the first quarter that carried the first in spades, but at a productivity expense as it strives to represent the public under a brand new range of daunting conditions.
The corporation posted net revenues of $75.5 billion, up 26 percent a year earlier, a huge improvement over the $59.7 billion it generated in net profits in the first quarter of the year. Indeed, the total was due to retail revenue of $41 billion and to the software of $33 billion (which includes AWS, but also broadcasting and other non-physical goods).
Yet earnings per share took a fall, with basic EPS at $5.09 and diluted EPS at $5.01, with net profit falling to $2.535 billion from $3.561 billion a year ago.
Net profits also plummeted in the same period a year earlier, to $4 billion from an operating profit of $4.4 billion.
Analysts were predicting an estimated EPS of $6.25 on gross revenues of $73.61bn. It was a reversal of the trend we saw yesterday, but on a much, much larger scale, from eBay’s earnings.
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In addition to all this, the company received feedback suggesting it could move into an operating loss in Q2. It said it was expecting net revenue of between $75.0 billion and $81.0 billion, or to rise between 18 percent and 28 percent relative to the second quarter of 2019 (but with this period mostly flat). Yet net income is forecast to range from negative $1.5 billion to $1.5 billion, relative to $3.1 billion a year earlier.
Jeff Bezos, the colorful founder and CEO of Amazon, acknowledged the challenges facing even the powerful Amazon, but also reiterated, similar to Q2 guidance, that the company is planning to double its spending to serve people during the COVID-19 pandemic, whatever it could bring.
And while services are not yet overtaking sales of goods, the company is seeing profits from its services rise significantly faster, 33% versus 22%. Services provide not only online sharing, but the distribution of foodstuffs and other non-physical paying items Amazon offers.
Amazon was one of the few businesses to recruit at a time when we had hundreds of thousands of employees laid off across its industry, primarily to employ 100,000 extra staff across warehouses and their distribution network to satisfy the growing demand from customers. Nonetheless, it has not always been easy sailing, with allegations of unsafe and potentially health-prone working conditions.
Conclusion:
That has been a thorny problem for the company, and it’s no wonder that it strongly told investors in its earnings report that it has made “over 150 major operational improvements in our corporate network and Whole Foods Market stores to help employees remain healthier — and we do regular evaluations of the steps we have put in place.
