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Amazon has seen net sales rise by 10% to $148bn (£116bn) in the second quarter, up from $134.4bn (£106bn) the prior year, though this was slightly below analysts’ estimates for the period. Its North America segment performed well over the period, with sales rising 9% year-on-year to $90bn (£71bn). International segment sales rose by 7% to $31.7bn (£25bn).
According to CNBC, Brian Olsavsky, CFO of Amazon, told reporters the group “came in a little short on revenue growth in North America versus our internal estimates”, noting that lower than expected revenues were due to customers choosing cheaper products.
He said: “What we’re seeing is really around average selling price (ASP) and lower ASP in products selected by customers. They are continuing to be cautious in their spending and trading down to lower ASP products.”
Despite this, Amazon’s overall performance was largely boosted by its AWS segment, which continued to be a “top choice” for customers, as sales soared by 19% to $26.3bn (£21bn).
Elsewhere, operating income rose to $14.7bn (£11.6bn) in the second quarter, up from $7.7bn (£6bn) the prior year, while net income hit $13.5bn (£10.6bn), up from $6.7bn (£5.3bn).
Looking ahead, the company said it expects third quarter sales to be between $154bn and $158.5bn, or to grow between 8% and 11% compared with the prior year.
Operating income is expected to be between $11.5bn (£9bn) and $15bn (£11.6bn), compared with $11.2bn (£8.8bn) last year.
Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, said: “We’re continuing to make progress on a number of dimensions, but perhaps none more so than the continued reacceleration in AWS growth.
“As companies continue to modernise their infrastructure and move to the cloud, while also leveraging new Generative AI opportunities, AWS continues to be customers’ top choice as we have much broader functionality, superior security and operational performance, a larger partner ecosystem, and AI capabilities like SageMaker for model builders, Bedrock for those leveraging frontier models, Trainium for those where the cost of compute for training and inference matters, and Q for those wanting the most capable GenAI assistant for not just coding, but also software development and business integration.”
