Amazon shares are expected to fall when US stock markets open tonight despite it just posting a net profit of US$2.1 billion on total sales up 20% to US$63.4 billion for the quarter ending June 30, 2019. That translated into US$5.22 in earnings per share, compared to US$5.07 per share in the prior corresponding quarter.
For the quarter ending September 31 2019 Amazon is guiding for operating income between US$2.1 billion and US$3.1 billion on sales between US$66 billion to US$70 billion.
Amazon's cloud or data centre business, Amazon Web Services, that is often touted as its great profit growth driver posted sales growth of 37% to US$8.38 billion, which reportedly was below analysts' estimates. It also suggests Microsoft which this week reported very strong growth across its own cloud business is starting to gain on AWS in this space.
Over the quarter Amazon also invested heavily in accelerating its move to offer Amazon Prime customers free one day delivery. "Customers are responding to Prime's move to one-day delivery — we've received a lot of positive feedback and seen accelerating sales growth," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.
