Amazon has seen healthy sales of consumer sales and receipt to the cloud computing business in its last quarter, but the company told investors on Thursday to expect growth growth ahead.
Sales from October to December hit $ 187.8 billion, up 10 percent from the previous year. Profit increased by 88 %to $ 20 billion. Both were approximately in line with Wall Street’s expectations.
However, the company marked that in 2025 it would reach a weaker start, expecting that sales would increase between 5 and 9 % in the current quarter and that operating profits could potentially be lower than a year ago.
Cloud computing increased by 19 %to $ 28.8 billion in the quarter. The results – considered to be an indication that Amazon’s investments in artificial intelligence exude – were particularly strong as the company’s leading competitors, Microsoft and the alphabet reported recent results undermining investors. In the same quarter of 2023, Amazon’s cloud operation increased just 13 %.
Investors also focus on Amazon’s Cloud Computing business because it has become a profit engine for the company. The operating profit for the cloud business was $ 10.6 billion, which represented half of Amazon’s total operating profit.
The technological industry has been shaken by the recent liberation of an effective system of artificial intelligence from a Chinese start, Deepseek. Amazon quickly made the Deepseek system available for customers to use, saying it is an example of the way Amazon has created its approach to allow users to mix easily and match different AI tools.
In a call with investors, Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, said AI should follow the model of other technological trends: as systems become less expensive in development, customers will do so “He encouraged what else they could build that they always believed was a prohibitive cost before, and they usually end up spending much more overall. ”
The company spent $ 26 billion by creating data centers, warehouses and other capital costs in the quarter, offering its annual total to more than $ 77 billion. Mr Jassy said Amazon could sell more cloud computing if it had more data center capacity, special brands for AI
Amazon told investors that the current proportion of capital investment will continue throughout 2025, implying that it could exceed $ 100 billion this year.
Despite investment, Amazon for the first time ended the year with more than $ 82 billion in cash.
The price of Amazon’s stock decreased more than 4 % in transactions after hours.
Sales in Amazon’s North America, which includes product sales, as well as services such as advertising and primary entries, increased by 10 % in the critical holiday season. The retail industry has generally reported surprisingly strong holiday sales.
Amazon customers buy more as the company offers faster shipping. She has edited her activities to put more items closer to customers, making them fastest and less expensive to deliver. Amazon delivered more than nine billion items itself or the next day in 2024, than more than seven billion in 2023.
Amazon’s North America’s operating margin increased to more than 8 %. Two years ago, it didn’t even break. billion dollars.
The company finished the year with 1,556,000 employees, just 2 %.
