The multinational Amazon has announced a profit of 10,431 million dollars (9,775 million euros) in the first quarter of the year. The figure triples what the e-commerce and cloud computing services giant obtained in the same period of 2023 thanks above all to its commitment to artificial intelligence (AI) and the strong growth in advertising.
Specifically, net turnover amounted to 143,313 million in the first three months of the year, 12% more than a year before. The improvement in results is largely due to the advance of artificial intelligence and the commitment of companies to the modernization of their infrastructures, which is “reaccelerating” the growth of Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud service. , explained the CEO and president of Amazon, Andy Jassy.
The company managed to increase its revenues in this division, the most profitable of its entire business, by 17% year-on-year in the first quarter, up to $25 billion, despite the fact that analysts indicated a slowdown due to increased competition and cutting business spending. Another factor that contributed to the improvement in results was the increase in sales in North America – its first market – of 12%, up to 86,341 million, to which is added the growth in the international business, of 9.7%. , up to 31,935 million.
Amazon, one of the largest technology companies in the US, despite having jumped on the wave of AI innovation led by Microsoft relatively late, has its own generative artificial intelligence assistant, Amazon Q, and is incorporating this tool into its business . Jassy explained that the capabilities of this new technology have contributed to the AWS segment reaching an annual turnover of 100 billion dollars. Likewise, she highlights the strong growth of advertising services, of 24% year-on-year, up to 11,824 million, which the top executive attributes to the good performance of physical stores and its Prime Video streaming platform. In this sense, it should be noted that these are the multinational’s first results since it introduced video advertising to the Prime Video streaming service to make this platform more profitable.
However, the company admits that it continues to record charges that reduce its figures, of 2,000 million, for its investment in the electric car company Rivian.
For the second quarter, it expects growth in its net billing of between 7 and 11% year-on-year, figures that do not convince analysts, who point out that it continues to be affected by the reduction in spending on its cloud services.
