Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Results

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced 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.

For additional highlights from the quarter, visit aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-earnings-q3-2024-highlights.

Financial Guidance

The following forward-looking statements reflect Amazon.com’s expectations as of October 31, 2024, and are subject to substantial uncertainty. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic and geopolitical conditions and customer demand and spending (including the impact of recessionary fears), inflation, interest rates, regional labor market constraints, world events, the rate of growth of the internet, online commerce, cloud services, and new and emerging technologies, and the various factors detailed below.

Fourth Quarter 2024 Guidance

• Net sales are expected to be between $181.5 billion and $188.5 billion, or to grow between 7% and 11% compared with fourth quarter 2023. This guidance anticipates an unfavorable impact of approximately 10 basis points from foreign exchange rates.
• Operating income is expected to be between $16.0 billion and $20.0 billion, compared with $13.2 billion in fourth quarter 2023.
• This guidance assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded.

Conference Call Information

A conference call will be webcast live today at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET, and will be available for at least three months at amazon.com/ir. This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the Company’s financial and operating results.

Forward-Looking Statements

These forward-looking statements are inherently difficult to predict. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially for a variety of reasons, including, in addition to the factors discussed above, the amount that Amazon.com invests in new business opportunities and the timing of those investments, the mix of products and services sold to customers, the mix of net sales derived from products as compared with services, the extent to which we owe income or other taxes, competition, management of growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, international growth and expansion, the outcomes of claims, litigation, government investigations, and other proceedings, fulfillment, sortation, delivery, and data center optimization, risks of inventory management, variability in demand, the degree to which the Company enters into, maintains, and develops commercial agreements, proposed and completed acquisitions and strategic transactions, payments risks, and risks of fulfillment throughput and productivity. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services, and technologies, security breaches, system interruptions, government regulation and taxation, and fraud. In addition, global economic and geopolitical conditions and additional or unforeseen circumstances, developments, or events may give rise to or amplify many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Additional Information

Our investor relations website is amazon.com/ir and we encourage investors to use it as a way of easily finding information about us. We promptly make available on this website, free of charge, the reports that we file or furnish with the SEC, corporate governance information (including our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics), and select press releases, which may contain material information about us, and you may subscribe to be notified of new information posted to this site.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

Amazon.com, Inc.
Certain Definitions

Customer Accounts

• References to customers mean customer accounts established when a customer places an order through one of our stores. Customer accounts exclude certain customers, including customers associated with certain of our acquisitions, Amazon Payments customers, AWS customers, and the customers of select companies with whom we have a technology alliance or marketing and promotional relationship. Customers are considered active when they have placed an order during the preceding twelve-month period.

Seller Accounts

• References to sellers means seller accounts, which are established when a seller receives an order from a customer account. Sellers are considered active when they have received an order from a customer during the preceding twelve-month period.

AWS Customers

• References to AWS customers mean unique AWS customer accounts, which are unique customer account IDs that are eligible to use AWS services. This includes AWS accounts in the AWS free tier. Multiple users accessing AWS services via one account ID are counted as a single account. Customers are considered active when they have had AWS usage activity during the preceding one-month period.

Units

• References to units mean physical and digital units sold (net of returns and cancellations) by us and sellers in our stores as well as Amazon-owned items sold in other stores. Units sold are paid units and do not include units associated with AWS, certain acquisitions, certain subscriptions, rental businesses, or advertising businesses, or Amazon gift cards.

Contacts

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