Amazon is an ever-growing giant. The company, which has been accused by antitrust authorities of abusing its market dominance, continues to gain market share, according to results published on Thursday. After a very strong holiday quarter, Amazon closed 2023 with revenue of $574,785 million, up 12% year-on-year, according to annual reports published by the company. It was also profitable growth. Andy Jassy, the CEO who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos, has always focused on cost containment, efficiency and commitment to the most profitable companies, after years of the group's priority being to grow at all costs .
Both the Seattle-based group's sales and profit figures exceeded market expectations and shares rose sharply on the stock market outside of normal trading hours.
North America segment revenue increased 12% year-over-year to $352.8 billion, and international business grew 11% to $131.2 billion. In addition, sales from the global cloud computing and data processing division (Amazon Web Services, AWS), which rose by 13% to $90.8 billion. AWS has slightly accelerated the pace of growth that had slowed in recent quarters, but still hasn't reached the speeds to which the market had grown accustomed.
Operating profit tripled to $36.9 billion in 2023 compared to $12.2 billion in 2022, primarily as the e-commerce segment in North America was hit by operating losses of $2. $8 billion to profits of $14.9 billion. Additionally, the international segment's operating losses were reduced from $7.7 billion to $2.7 billion. The most profitable division continued to be AWS, with operating profit of $24.6 billion, compared to $22.8 billion in 2022.
Depending on the type of business, the group concentrates its revenues on direct e-commerce sales (approximately 232,000 million), but also generates sales of approximately 20,000 million in its physical stores. In addition, there are around 140,000 million for sales services for third parties, around 40,000 million for subscriptions and 90,000 million from AWS. Additionally, in an effort to diversify its revenue, Amazon has ramped up its advertising efforts on its shopping website and last month began running ads on streaming service Prime Video. Advertising revenue rose 27% to $14.7 billion in the fourth quarter. For the whole year they amounted to 46,906 million dollars.
Overall, net income was $30,425 million in 2023, compared to losses of $2.7 billion in 2022. These benefits include $800 million from the appreciation of the investment in Rivian Automotive, which occurred in the The previous financial year represented a burden of 12.7 billion US dollars.
Profit in 2023 is slightly below the $33,364 million in 2021, but this result was heavily influenced by Rivian's revaluation on the stock market. The current one is operationally a record.
For its part, operating cash flow rose 82% to $84.9 billion and free cash flow improved to an inflow of $36.8 billion over the last 12 months, compared to an outflow of $11.6 billion. dollars in 2022.
“This fourth quarter was a record-breaking holiday shopping season and capped off a solid 2023 for Amazon,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement. “While we have made significant progress in revenue, operating income and free cash flow, we are most excited about the continued innovation and customer experience improvements across our businesses,” he added.
Jassy said by regionalizing its U.S. distribution network, Amazon was able to achieve the fastest delivery speeds in its history for members of its subscription service Prime while reducing service costs.
Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2024, Amazon expects sales of between $138 and $143.5 billion and pre-tax profit of between $8 and $12 billion, according to analyst forecasts.
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