Amazon sales surge driven by AI and advertising

Amazon posted a 13% increase in net sales to reach $143.4bn (£114.8bn)  for the first quarter to March 31, 2024, up 13% year on year.

Net income for the period hit $10.4bn (£8.3bn), up on the $3.2bn (£2.56bn) during the same period last year, while operating income also soared from $4.8bn (£3.85bn) to $15.3bn (£12.3bn).

With an eye to its Amazon Web Services (AWS) arm, sales jumped 17% year on year to $25bn (£20.04bn).

Sales in North America were up 12% to reach $86.3bn (£69.21bn), while other international sales jumped 10% to hit $31.9bn (£25.6bn).

Advertising revenue was up 24% year on year and Amazon president and chief executive Andy Jassy said the retail giant’s advertising efforts “continued to benefit” from the growth of its Prime Video business.

Amazon also hailed its “obsession” with the customer experience as it delivered parcels to Prime members at its “fastest speeds ever”, with 75% of items in London, Tokyo and Toronto arriving on the same or next day.

Jassy added: “It was a good start to the year across the business, and you can see that in both our customer experience improvements and financial results.

“The combination of companies renewing their infrastructure modernization efforts and the appeal of AWS’s AI capabilities is reaccelerating AWS’s growth rate (now at a $100bn annual revenue run rate); our stores business continues to expand selection, provide everyday low prices, and accelerate delivery speed (setting another record on speed for Prime customers in Q1) while lowering our cost to serve.”

He concluded: “It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward.”