Amazon profits treble amid lockdown shopping boom

Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) has capped off Big Tech earnings week with a blockbuster set of quarterly numbers as a boom in online shopping during lockdowns across the world sent profits surging. After Wall Street’s close on Thursday, the ecommerce giant reported that net income had more than trebled to US$8.1bn, or US$15.79 per share, in the three months to March 31 compared to US$2.5bn a year ago, while net sales jumped 44% to US$108.5bn. READ: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos at it again as Amazon boss protests Moon contract The results for the period trounced analyst expectations, which had forecast revenues of US$104.5bn and earnings per share of US$9.54. Aside from its core retail operation, the firm highlighted strong growth in its cloud-computing segment, Amazon Web Services, which saw net sales in the period rise to US$13.5bn from US$10.2bn. The company’s founder Jeff Bezos also noted that the company’s Prime video streaming service had seen a 70% year-on-year increase in hours streamed, while the company said there are now over 200mln Prime members worldwide. Amazon also predicted that the momentum in sales would continue into the second quarter, forecasting net sales for the second quarter of between US$110-US$116bn and operating income of between US$4.5-US$8bn compared to US$5.8bn in the same period a year ago. The prediction of higher second-quarter sales is partially linked to the firm’s assumption that its annual Prime Day sales event will take place in June, a month earlier than usual, after last year’s event was pushed back to October due to pandemic-related complications.