What Did Amazon Do This Week? - 05-02-2023
What Did Amazon Do This Week? - 05-02-2023
Q4 EARNINGS LACK CLOUD COVER, FTC NOT CONVINCED ON AMAZON HEALTH
While the FTC is busy planning a big lawsuit over OneMedical, Amazon’s Earnings took centre stage this week, with a better holiday quarter than expected on the one hand and an annual net loss of $2.7 billion, compared with a net income of $33.4 billion in 2021. The markets went nuts, of course.
Despite its worst annual loss in years, Amazon exceeded Wall Street’s Q4 expectations by almost $4 billion, but AWS sales increased 20% YoY (slowest on record), which rattled the poor money jugglers despite the recent austerity cuts, healthcare and ‘Buy with Prime’ button announcements.
Breaking the Q4 numbers down; revenue was up 9% YoY to $149.2B, net income was down 98% YoY to $278M, ad revenue was up $11.56 billion vs an expected $11.38 billion, AWS revenue was up 20% YoY to $21.4B, and employees were down 4% to 1.54M. Stock is down ±5%. All eyes are now on AWS for the coming quarters because of the unchartered territory this graph depicts:
Jassy put a brave spin on things: “In the short term, we face an uncertain economy, but we remain quite optimistic about the long-term opportunities for Amazon,” Jassy said in a statement. “When you also factor in our investments and innovation in several other broad customer experiences (e.g. streaming entertainment, customer-first healthcare, broadband satellite connectivity for more communities globally), there’s additional reason to feel optimistic about what the future holds.”
Amazon anticipates its Q1 ‘23 net sales will reach between $121 billion and $126 billion, up 4% to 8% from the same period in 2022. (in line with analyst forecasts). For the upcoming quarters, "we do anticipate to see some reduced growth rates," CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters on Thursday.
SO WHAT?
Essentially, the days of “Cloud cover” as Reuters coined it, are limited. Expect Amazon to push harder to get confidence back and keep workers focused and not looking for life rafts. Expect more turmoil as many of the significant forces Amazon seeks to control are out of their hands for now.
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Amazon spent almost $17 billion on content in 2022. /Deadline
Amazon Prime Video inks multi-picture licensing deal with South Africa’s ‘Known Associates'‘. /Variety
Prime Video is giving Chris Pratt’s ‘The Terminal List’ a second season & prequel series. /Deadline
Amazon has greenlit a series with Anthony Anderson where he plays a Car Salesman who can perform miracles. /Variety
For some ungodly reason, Amazon is doing a third season of ‘James May: Our Man In…’. /Deadline
Courtenay Valenti is in talks with Amazon for the top film position at MGM. /Variety
Amazon says +100 million people watched the Lord of the Rings content. /Amazon
Prime Video picks up Peter Farrelly’s ‘Ricky Stanicky’ starring Zan Efron. /Deadline
Amazon is creating ‘Criminal’, a series based Ed Brubaker’s comic books. /Deadline
AWS CloudTrail Lake now supports ingesting activity events from non-AWS sources. /Amazon
Despite a big launch, Amazon Prime Air drones delivered to fewer than 10 houses by mid-January. /The Information
Zurich selected AWS to accelerate digital transformation. /Amazon
Amazon released their quantum computing papers for QIP. /Amazon
Amazon launched new reference architecture and a set of reference implementations for enterprise-grade deployment pipelines. /Amazon
Starting Feb 15, custom products are no longer eligible for return. /Amazon
Amazon Fresh launched a plant-based ready meal range in the UK. /Vegconomist
Here’s a list of all the price changes Amazon plans that we know about in 2023. /SellersBlog
Amazon has paused Fresh rollout plan, per CEO. /Bloomberg
Amazon plans more Prime benefits as membership plateaus. /Retail Dive
Amazon announced its Career Choice program saw 110,000 participants in 2022 (record numbers). /Amazon
Amazon reports Q4 advertising services revenue grew 19% YoY to $11.56B, vs. $11.38B est. /CNBC
Amazon reported subscription services revenue grew 13% YoY to $9.19B. /CNBC
Amazon broke the law in Staten Island again, says Judge. /Amazon
Christina Malach (prev. senior development executive at Amazon Studios) has joined the independent studio Media Res. /Deadline
A Spanish court ruled that Amazon had broken labour laws. /AP
Amazon won a dismissal in a suit that said Alexa was listening to people. /Bloomberg
Amazon beat the claim that warehouse quotas are biased against older workers. /Reuters
Amazon set a new record for most renewable energy purchased by a single company. /Amazon
Amazon disclosed staff injury rates showing where it is worse or better than peers. /Reuters
Amazon illegally threatened NYC workers ahead of union votes, judge finds. /Amazon
Amazon is trying to sublet factories in the UK. /Telegraph
Amazon faces new round of penalties for worker safety violations. /Reuters
Polish competition watchdog accuses Amazon EU of misleading consumers. /Amazon
Fortune magazine listed Amazon as #2 in World’s Most Admired Companies list. /Fortune
According to a leaked memo, Amazon only wants to hire students and new grads for entry-level software roles. /BI
Amazon is looking to hire web3 folks for Cloud services division. /Coinbase
Amazon workers in Barcelona strike over warehouse closure. /Reuters
The FTC is planning a huge lawsuit against Amazon. /Reuters
Rivian is getting into the electric bike market, per CEO. /Bloomberg
The real reason for tech layoffs, bring workers to heel. /LA Times
Amazon's third-party “seller services”, a large and growing part of the company's revenue that is also profitable, has filled its Marketplace with junk products. /NY Mag
M&S (British fashion/homes/food brand) has hired Amazon’s Fashion Head. /RetailDive
There’s a lot of Spanish-language streaming happening on Twitch. /Bloomberg
Amazon still grasping for success with supermarkets, CEO says. /Reuters