WASHINGTON (US) – With online sales and its attractive business supporting third-party merchants during the pandemic, Amazon.com Inc on Thursday posted its biggest profit in its 26-year history.
In after-hours trade, shares of the world’s largest online retailer climbed 5%.
When other retailers shut their shops during the lockdown, Amazon went on to hire as many as 175,000 people as the demand for its services peaked. The firm said its revenue jumped 40% from a year earlier to touch $88.9 billion.
The firm had predicted that it would lose money in the Q-2, as it had to spend as much as $4 billion on protective equipment for staff and other expenses related to coronavirus pandemic. In spite of that the company earned $5.2 billion, which is double its net income from a year earlier.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement that “This was another highly unusual quarter.”
According to Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, “Everyone was looking for masks; everyone was looking for gloves; everyone was buying groceries online. That mix is not super profitable,” he said. “What we saw in Q2 was not only did the mix start to shift back to a more normal mix” but that “we also were able to ship a lot more than we had originally thought.”
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field