Amazon.com announces Q3 results: Know the details

DBT Bureau

Pune, 3 Nov 2024

Amazon.com, Inc. reported financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2024.

• Net sales increased 11% to $158.9 billion in the third quarter, compared with $143.1 billion in third quarter 2023. Excluding the $0.2 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 11% compared with third quarter 2023.
  • North America segment sales increased 9% year-over-year to $95.5 billion.
  • International segment sales increased 12% year-over-year to $35.9 billion.
  • AWS segment sales increased 19% year-over-year to $27.5 billion.
• Operating income increased to $17.4 billion in the third quarter, compared with $11.2 billion in third quarter 2023.
  • North America segment operating income was $5.7 billion, compared with operating income of $4.3 billion in third quarter 2023.
  • International segment operating income was $1.3 billion, compared with an operating loss of $0.1 billion in third quarter 2023.
  • AWS segment operating income was $10.4 billion, compared with operating income of $7.0 billion in third quarter 2023.
• Net income increased to $15.3 billion in the third quarter, or $1.43 per diluted share, compared with $9.9 billion, or $0.94 per diluted share, in third quarter 2023.
• Operating cash flow increased 57% to $112.7 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $71.7 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2023.
• Free cash flow increased to $47.7 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $21.4 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2023.
• Free cash flow less principal repayments of finance leases and financing obligations increased to $44.9 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $15.9 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2023.
• Free cash flow less equipment finance leases and principal repayments of all other finance leases and financing obligations increased to $46.1 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $20.2 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2023.

“As we get into the holiday season, we’re excited about what we have in store for customers,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon President & CEO. “We kicked off the holiday season with our biggest-ever Prime Big Deal Days and the launch of an all-new Kindle lineup that is significantly outperforming our expectations; and there’s so much more coming, from tens of millions of deals, to our NFL Black Friday game and Election Day coverage with Brian Williams on Prime Video, to over 100 new cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities that we’ll share at AWS re:Invent the week after Thanksgiving.”

Some other highlights since the company’s last earnings announcement include that Amazon:

• Held its annual Prime Big Deal Days shopping event, with record sales, number of items sold, and Prime member participation, saving Prime members more than $1 billion with deals across its Store.
• Announced its first-ever fuel savings offer for Prime, saving U.S. members 10 cents a gallon on fuel at approximately 7,000 bp, Amoco, and ampm locations.
• Expanded its selection of brands with AllSaints, Beats x Kim, Estée Lauder, kate spade new york, and more.
• Announced plans to expand Amazon Pharmacy Same-Day Delivery of medications to nearly half the U.S. in 2025 by accelerating the roll out of new pharmacies in 20 more U.S. cities by the end of next year.
• Launched new generative AI-powered features, including:
  • Rufus, a generative AI expert shopping assistant, becoming available in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, and the UK.
  • AI Shopping Guides, which simplifies product research by using generative AI to pair information about a product category with Amazon’s wide selection, making it easier for customers to find the right product for their needs.
  • Project Amelia, an AI assistant for sellers that offers tailored business insights to boost productivity and drive seller growth.
  • Video generation and live image capabilities for advertisers that makes it fast and easy for brands to deliver compelling creative for customers through short, animated campaign images.
• Launched new foundation models in Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, including AI21 Labs’ Jamba 1.5 family, Anthropic’s upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Meta’s Llama 3.2, Mistral Large 2, and multiple Stability AI models.
• Launched new memory-optimized, compute-optimized, and general purpose Amazon EC2 instances based on AWS’s latest generation Graviton4 processor, which delivers 75% more memory bandwidth and 30% better compute performance than the previous generation Graviton chips.
• Launched Oracle Database@AWS for customers to easily and quickly migrate Oracle workloads to dedicated infrastructure on AWS with minimal to no database or application changes.
• Entered a strategic collaboration with Databricks to accelerate the development of custom models built with Databricks Mosaic AI on AWS, and for Databricks to leverage AWS Trainium chips as the preferred AI chip to help customers improve price-performance when building generative AI applications.
• Signed AWS agreements with several large enterprise companies such as The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, Booking.com, Capital One, Datadog, Epic Games, Fast Retailing, Itaú Unibanco, Luma AI, National Australia Bank, Sony, T-Mobile, Toyota, and Veeva.
• Launched Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to positive reviews from customers and critics alike, ranking as Prime Video’s most watched returning season ever by hours watched.
• Drew more than 17 million viewers to the Cowboys-Giants Thursday Night Football game, the most-streamed NFL regular season game ever.
• Added Apple TV+ to Prime Video’s collection of over 100 add-on subscription channels in the U.S.
• Announced a new Kindle lineup, including a reimagined Kindle Scribe with generative AI, the Kindle Colorsoft with a color display, and the fastest Kindle Paperwhite ever.
• Announced investments in the Delivery Service Partner program of $2.1 billion in North America to support safety programs, training, incentives, and more, as well as 25 billion yen in Japan to support last mile delivery innovation, and safety and technology for drivers.
• Announced plans to hire 250,000 people across its U.S. operations ahead of the holiday season. All seasonal employees earn at least $18 per hour and have access to comprehensive benefits like health care.
• Announced plans for AWS to invest £8 billion over five years in the UK, supporting 14,000 jobs annually.
• Removed plastic air pillows from all delivery packaging at fulfillment centers globally, including expanding its use of paper filler made from 100% recycled content across North America to replace plastic air pillows.
• Mobilized Disaster Relief by Amazon to support communities around the world impacted by natural disasters. In the U.S., Amazon leveraged its Disaster Relief Hub in Atlanta to support communities impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton with donated goods, logistics support, and technology. In Europe, Amazon mobilized its global logistics infrastructure, inventory, teams, and technology to provide rapid assistance for flooding across the region.