SEATTLE — Amazon on Thursday reported fourth-quarter sales and earnings that topped analysts’ expectations, driven in part by a “record-breaking” holiday season.
The company said its net sales increased 14% to $170.0 billion in the fourth quarter ended December 31, up from $149.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022. Net income increased to $10.6 billion in the fourth quarter, or $1.00 per diluted share, compared with $0.3 billion, or $0.03 per diluted share, in the prior year period.
“This Q4 was a record-breaking Holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023 for Amazon,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement. “While we made meaningful revenue, operating income, and free cash flow progress, what we’re most pleased with is the continued invention and customer experience improvements across our businesses.
“The regionalization of our U.S. fulfillment network led to our fastest-ever delivery speeds for Prime members while also lowering our cost to serve; AWS’s continued long-term focus on customers and feature delivery, coupled with new genAI capabilities like Bedrock, Q, and Trainium have resonated with customers and are starting to be reflected in our overall results; our Advertising services continue to improve and drive positive results; our newer businesses are progressing nicely, and along with our more established businesses, collectively making customers’ lives easier and better every day. As we enter 2024, our teams are delivering at a rapid clip, and we have a lot in front of us to be excited about.”
Amazon also announced the introduction of Rufus, a new generative AI-powered conversational shopping experience. The company describes Rufus as an expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s product catalog and information from across the web to answer customer questions on shopping needs, products, and comparisons; to make recommendations based on this context, and to facilitate product discovery.
To use Rufus, customers can simply start typing or speaking their questions into the search bar in the Amazon Shopping app, or choose from a set of pre-populated questions, and Amazon will provide answers via a chat dialog box to help customers make more informed purchase decisions. Rufus launched in beta to a small subset of customers and will progressively roll out to the rest of Amazon’s U.S. customers in the coming weeks.
Looking ahead, Amazon expects net sales for the first quarter of 2024 to be between $138.0 billion and $143.5 billion, representing growth of between 8% and 13% compared with the first quarter of 2023. This guidance anticipates a favorable impact of approximately 40 basis points from foreign exchange rates. The company is also projecting that operating income for the first quarter will be between $8.0 billion and $12.0 billion, compared with $4.8 billion in first quarter 2023.
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