Net income was $79 million in Q3, compared to a quarterly net loss of $437 million a year ago.
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Its Intelligent Cloud arm – home to Azure, enterprise services and server products – was the only of its three divisions to grow annually, with sales up eight per cent to $5.9bn.
“We remain heads down, focused on driving a better customer experience through price, selection and convenience”, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the company’s earnings call. Segment operating income, which excludes stock-based compensation, soared to $528 million, up from a loss of $60 million during the third quarter of 2014.
The company detailed the revenue of AWS for the first time in April this year, revealing the business brought in just over US$5 billion in sales in the 12 months to March 2015.
Amazon shares vaulted higher Thursday after the online giant’s second consecutive surprise profit, defying expectations for a loss.
Amazon Prime helped bolster Amazon profits.
The growth numbers are also impressive, to be sure: AWS third quarter revenue grew 78 percent year over year-specifically, generating $2.1 billion in revenue versus $1.17 billion in Q3 2014-which is only slightly slower than the 82 percent growth that Amazon saw in the second quarter. Additionally, many worldwide markets are starting to demonstrate Prime adoption and third-party sales trends consistent with the maturation curve in the United States, suggesting operating margins can build to the low- to mid-single-digit range over time.
Roughly one-third of all US e-commerce sales pass through Amazon’s site, of which about 60% are through third party sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace, said Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor’s executive chairman.
Needless to say, investors are loving the results. The company also said that more people signed up for a free trial of Prime on that day than any other day ever. They expect operating income to come in between $80 million and $1.28 billion, compared to last year’s $591 million.
Amazon’s stock soared more than 10 percent in after-hours trading. Moreover, we think heightened investments in the worldwide region will continue to weigh on overall profitability in the near-future.
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The profits came on a 23 per cent year-on-year gain in total sales to $US25.4 billion.
