Amazon has just released its financial report for both the fourth quarter of 2024 and the entire year. The document highlights the solid growth of the tech giant, which has been largely driven by the holiday season.
In 2024, Amazon’s net sales (gross sales less discounts and returns) reached $701.800 billion, reflecting a growth of 11% compared to $632.280 billion in 2023.
Of these $701.800 billion, $206.571 billion corresponded to the net sales of the fourth quarter of the year, which increased by 10% year-on-year.
Andy Jassy, President and CEO of Amazon, explained, «The holiday shopping season was the most successful ever for Amazon, and we thank our customers, sales partners, and employees who helped make it so».
While Amazon generated $701.800 billion in 2024, the most significant contribution came from North America segment sales, which grew by 10% to reach $426.250 billion.
Meanwhile, the International segment sales amounted to $157.190 billion, indicating a 9% year-on-year increase. However, the most significant growth was observed in the AWS sales, rising by 19% year-on-year to $118.360 billion.
The report underscores that Amazon continues to rely mainly on its North American business, but AWS is the segment with the highest growth and profitability, with an operating margin exceeding that of other divisions.
«When we look back at this quarter in several years, I suspect that what we will remember most is the remarkable innovation that occurred across all our businesses, especially in AWS, where we introduced our new artificial intelligence chip Trainium2, our own foundational models in Amazon Nova, a host of new models and features in Amazon Bedrock that provide clients with flexibility and cost savings, liberating transformations in Amazon Q to migrate from legacy platforms, and the upcoming version of Amazon SageMaker for more coordinated data, analytics, and AI management.
These benefits are often experienced by clients (and the company) months later, but they are substantial enablers in this emerging technology landscape, and we are excited to see what clients will build», said Jassy.
According to the business area and quarterly results breakdown included in Amazon’s document, AWS was identified as the fastest-growing division in the fourth quarter of 2024. Specifically, AWS net sales increased by 19% compared to the same period in 2023, reaching $31.664 billion.
However, this was not the area that generated most of the income for the last quarter of 2024. Of the $206.571 billion in net sales for this period, 40.23% ($83.112 billion) came from the Online Store.
The company also continues to earn more from the sale of its various services ($117.322 billion) than from selling products ($89.248 billion).
The operating income (profits that a company earns from its core business activities, before deducting interest and taxes) for 2024 stood at $75.460 billion, an 85.91% increase from 2023. Meanwhile, the net income (the actual profit after all expenses have been deducted) was $65.120 billion, almost a 95% year-on-year increase.
The report also provides these same data but limited only to the fourth quarter of 2024. During these months, the operating income grew by 60.6% to $23.320 billion. And the net income reached $22.000 billion, revealing an increase of 88.7%.
The tech giant also shared its expectations for the first quarter of 2025. It expects to achieve net sales between $166.100 billion and $171.050 billion, representing growth of between 5% and 9% year-on-year.
Amazon highlights the following pertaining to this forecast: «This forecast anticipates an unusually large unfavorable impact of approximately $2.310 billion, or 150 basis points, due to currency exchange rates. Additionally, as a reminder, in the first quarter of 2024, the leap year impact added approximately $1.650 billion in net sales».
Regarding its operating income, expectations are to be between $15.400 billion and $19.800 billion, compared to $16.830 billion achieved during the first quarter of 2024.
These results have been calculated assuming, among other variables, that Amazon will not undertake additional company acquisitions, restructurings, or legal agreements. Therefore, they are subject to change if conditions vary.
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