Online giant Amazon.com released its earnings statement for the first quarter of 2015 on Thursday, revealing an increase in sales over the comparable quarter last year that exceeded analysts’ expectations.
For the first quarter of 2015, Amazon posted net sales of $22.72 billion, a 15 percent boost over the first quarter of 2014. The average estimate for sales this quarter had been $22.4 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Operating income for the company jumped 74 percent to $255 million for the quarter, compare to $146 million in the first quarter of 2014.
Net loss for the company was $57 million in the first quarter, or -$0.12 per diluted share, compared with net income of $108 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, in first quarter 2014. The reported earnings loss for the quarter was slightly less than analysts’ estimate of -$0.13 per share.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos touted the decade-old Amazon Web Services — a cloud computing platform made up of a collection of remote computing services including Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 — in Thursday’s earnings announcement.
“Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and still growing fast — in fact it’s accelerating,” Bezos said. “Born a decade ago, AWS is a good example of how we approach ideas and risk-taking at Amazon. We strive to focus relentlessly on the customer, innovate rapidly and drive operational excellence. We manage by two seemingly contradictory traits: impatience to deliver faster and a willingness to think long term.”
But there are new things going on as well at the retail company, including its Amazon Studios offering, which in this quarter announced that full seasons of “Mad Dogs,” “The Man in the High Castle,” “The New Yorker Presents” and children’s shows “Just Add Magic” and “The Stinky & Dirty Show” will debut exclusively for Prime members in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.
Amazon Studios also greenlit second seasons of “Mozart in the Jungle” and “Bosch,” as well as original kids series “Tumble Leaf,” “Creative Galaxy,” “Annedroids” and “Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street.”
Thus far, the gem of Amazon’s original series is “Transparent,” which stars Jeffrey Tambor and won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy early in Q1. Tambor also took home the Best Actor statue in January.
Currently, Amazon Studios is more of a loss leader to draw consumers and Prime subscribers to the web store, but early critical buzz has been solid.