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Amazon sold 37% more this summer, while profits even tripled. The corona effect continues, even more than analysts had expected. Christmas will be “unprecedented”, according to Jeff Bezos.
Higher incomes in particular
In the three months to 30 September, Amazon again achieved top figures: turnover rose by 37% to 96.1 billion dollar (82.34 billion euro) and gross profit was even up 197% on last year. Profit amounted to 6.3 billion dollars (5.4 billion euros). That doesn’t take into account the figures for the annual Prime Day, the bargain weekend organised by Amazon this year on 13 and 14 October.
As expected, online sales in particular rose by 38%, while turnover in physical stores, including supermarket chain Whole Foods, fell by 10%. Sales from external providers in the online market places increased by 55%. Amazon also outperformed analysts: in terms of turnover, Wall Street predicted 92.7 billion dollar.
According to CNN, the continued growth is due to the fact that Amazon Prime-customers are mainly in the higher income brackets, which means that they are not so much financially affected by the corona crisis as they are showing different spending behaviour: they spend less on travel and leisure, but more on products for the home.
Corona costs are high
For the important fourth quarter, Jeff Bezos’ company now expects a turnover of between 112 billion and 121 billion dollar (96 to 103 billion euro), with an operating profit of between 1 and 4.5 billion dollar (0.86 to 3.86 billion euro). The fork has deliberately been kept wide, because the online giant is counting on around 4 billion dollar in corona-related costs. That is twice as much as last quarter, because Amazon can see that productivity is falling as a result of Covid measures.
As a result, shipping costs rose by 57% in the third quarter to 15.1 billion dollar. The busier it will be towards the end of the year, the more expensive logistics will become. And it is getting busy, CEO Bezos already guarantees: “We’re seeing more customers than ever shopping early for their holiday gifts, which is just one of the signs that this is going to be an unprecedented holiday season.”
