Amazon announced on Thursday that it had sales of $149.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, a result that beats its forecasts and market expectations amid an environment where inflation is weighing on consumer spending.
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But the e-commerce giant gave a cautious guidance for the current quarter in its earnings release on Thursday: Revenues of between $121 billion and $126 billion, rather than the $125 billion consensus of analysts at Factset.
The American group also expects an operating profit of between 0 and 4 billion dollars. The market is expecting $4 billion for this key indicator of platform profitability.
On Wall Street, the stock fell more than 6% after the close in electronic trading.
“We are encouraged by the progress we are making in terms of cost cutting,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is quoted as saying in the press release.
At the beginning of January, the group announced that it would cut more than 18,000 jobs. At the end of September, it employed 1.54 million people worldwide, not counting seasonal workers hired during periods of increased activity, particularly during the holiday season.
“We face an uncertain economy in the near term, but we remain fairly optimistic about the long-term possibilities,” added Mr. Jassy.
AWS, its cloud (remote computing) arm, also disappointed with sales of 21.4 billion and operating income of 5.2 billion, a sign that the highly buoyant IT sector afar is no longer immune to economic conditions is.
A blow to Amazon, whose profits are “increasingly dependent on AWS,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Andrew Lipsman.
According to the company, Amazon’s global online sales will grow 14% to $746.2 billion by the end of 2023, accounting for a global market share of 11.8%.