It was generally business as usual at Amazon in the second quarter of 2024, with sales up 10%, to $148 billion, and operating income jumping 90%, to $14.7 billion, from $7.7 billion in the second quarter of 2023. As usual, the company's cloud services business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), led the way, with sales rising 19%, to $26.3, contributing the lion's share of Amazon's operating at $9.3 billion.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the acceleration of AWS growth was hugely important to the company, and will continue to be a top priority. “As companies continue to modernize their infrastructure and move to the cloud, while also leveraging new generative AI opportunities, AWS continues to be customers’ top choice," Jassy said in a statement.
But the continued AWS investments, disappointing earnings in some of Amazon's traditional businesses, and modest forecast for the the third quarter led to a small decline when Amazon's stock opened this morning. Second quarter sales in Amazon's online business increased just 5%, and sales through physical stores increased 4%. Sales through third-party sellers rose 12% in the quarter.
Among other business highlights, Amazon pointed to what it called its biggest Prime Day Shopping event yet, which was held in July and not included in its second quarter results. The company also touted faster delivery times to Prime members and the launch of its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, to all U.S. mobile customers.
Sales for the third quarter are expected to grow between 8% and 11% at the company, compared with the third quarter of 2023. Higher investments mean earnings could increase from $11.5 billion to $15.0 billion, compared with $11.2 billion in third quarter 2023.
