SEATTLE — Amazon.com Inc. reported third-quarter revenue and earnings that topped analysts’ forecasts, and the e-commerce giant said it expects fourth-quarter net sales to be between $160 billion and $167 billion, which would be an increase of between 7% and 12% compared with the fourth quarter of 2022.
For the fiscal third quarter ended September 30, net sales increased 13% to $143.1 billion. Excluding the $1.4 billion favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 11% compared with the third quarter of 2022. Amazon’s sales in North America increased 11% year-over-year to $87.9 billion, while sales in the international segment increased 16% year-over-year (or 11% when changes in foreign exchange rates are excluded) to $32.1 billion.
“We had a strong third quarter as our cost to serve and speed of delivery in our Stores business took another step forward, our AWS growth continued to stabilize, our Advertising revenue grew robustly, and overall operating income and free cash flow rose significantly,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said. “The benefits of moving from a single national fulfillment network in the U.S. to eight distinct regions are exceeding our optimistic expectations, and perhaps most importantly, putting us on pace to deliver the fastest delivery speeds for Prime customers in our 29-year history.”
Net income increased to $9.9 billion in the third quarter, or $0.94 per diluted share, compared with $2.9 billion, or $0.28 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2022. The company noted that net income gain in the third quarter of 2023 included a pre-tax valuation gain of $1.2 billion from the company’s investment in electric car company Rivian.
AWS segment sales increased 12% year-over-year to $23.1 billion, and Jassy said he was optimistic about the company’s web services business.
“The AWS team continues to innovate and deliver at a rapid clip,” he said, “particularly in generative AI, where the combination of our custom AI chips, Amazon Bedrock being the easiest and most flexible way to build and deploy generative AI applications, and our coding companion (CodeWhisperer) allowing enterprises to have the equivalent of an experienced engineer who understands all of their proprietary code is driving momentum with customers, including adidas, Booking.com, GoDaddy, LexisNexis, Merck, Royal Philips, and United Airlines, all of whom are starting to run generative AI workloads on AWS. Between AWS re:Invent and our 29th holiday shopping season, this is a particularly action-packed time of year at Amazon and we’re excited for what’s to come.”
Amazon projected that its operating income in the fourth quarter will be between $7.0 billion and $11.0 billion, compared with $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022.
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