Amazon’s march toward becoming a trillion-dollar company continues to roll on, with the e-commerce giant posting a huge profit — but missing on Wall Street revenue estimates — when it reported its second quarter earnings on Thursday.
Amazon reported revenue of $52.9 billion and earnings of $5.07 cents a share for the three months ended on June 30. Analysts projected $53.41 billion in revenue and $2.50 earnings per share, according to Thomson Reuters analyst estimates.
The earnings beat pushed Amazon to a record $2.5 billion quarterly profit. Amazon, once mocked for routinely pushing off profitability in search of rapid growth, has now posted a profit in 13 straight quarters.
Wall Street gave a vote of approval, with Amazon shares increasing four percent in early after-hours trading to $1,880 per share. The bump places Amazon on the verge of crossing the $900 million market cap threshold, as it looks to leapfrog Apple in the race towards becoming the first $1 trillion company.
CEO Jeff Bezos pointed to Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant software, in his remarks accompanying earnings.
“There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year,” said Bezos.
Amazon Web Services stood out with revenue growth of 49 percent year-over-year, hitting $6.1 billion in sales.
As usual for Amazon, it was a busy three months.
Amazon Prime Video showed signs of growth during the second quarter, earning 22 Emmy nominations, the most in its history. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” did the heavy lifting, pulling in 14 nominations alone.
Amazon also increased the membership price on Prime — its service offering customers perks like “free” two-day shipping and access to Amazon’s video catalog — during Q2, from $99 to $119 per year.
The Seattle-based tech giant has routinely set new highs on Wall Street since reporting huge first quarter earnings back in April, with its share price climbing 20 percent in the last three months. It was a continuation of Amazon’s blistering pace in 2018, with the company’s stock up 55 percent on the year heading into Thursday’s earnings.
Consequently, Bezos has gone from an exceptionally rich man to, well, an even more exceptionally rich man. The chief exec, who founded Amazon in 1994, saw his fortune swell to $150 billion during the quarter, making him the richest person in modern history.
Amazon’s success has only ramped up the pursuit to land its new second headquarters, with major cities from Toronto to Los Angeles falling over themselves in an attempt to win over the tech darling.
The company will hold a call at 5:30 p.m. ET to discuss its earnings.