In the January-March period, revenue reached $127.3 billion, up 9 percent year-on-year and significantly above the $124.6 billion analysts expected.

After initially welcoming the publication in the first electronic trading after the close, Wall Street finally corrected the course and put the stock under pressure. It was down more than 2% after gaining more than 10%.

The New York market raised Amazon's revenue forecast for the second quarter, to a range between $ 127 billion and $ 133 billion, slightly better than analysts' projections, which expect 129.8 billion.

In the first quarter, revenue growth came from the cloud, via the dedicated subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS), which saw its revenues increase by 16% year-on-year, excluding currency effects, although this increase reflects a slowdown.

From one quarter to the next, AWS's revenue even fell slightly (-0.1%).

"Customers continue to look for ways to optimize their cloud spend to address challenging economic conditions," Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said on the earnings conference call.

The executive revealed that remote computing growth in April saw a 5 percentage point lower growth rate than in the first quarter, which was already decelerating.

Another highlight was the dynamism of advertising, whose revenues rose by 21%, a pace comparable to that of previous quarters.

"This stronger-than-expected performance from the two key profit centers of AWS and advertising indicates that the company may have turned things around," said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at Insider Intelligence.

These figures compensate for the zero growth in online sales, which have been stalling for more than a year.

Monitor costs

In addition, "recent cost-saving measures seem to be producing improvements in profitability," Lipsman said.

Amazon has decided to cut 27,000 jobs in total. At the end of March, the group's workforce was 10% lower than in the same period last year, at 1.46 million employees.

"We are making progress in changing our cost structure back to pre-pandemic levels," Olsavsky said, referring to the redesign of Amazon's delivery services to optimize travel.

"Margins remain under pressure, (...) and we believe that, as a result, Amazon will continue to prioritize efficiency and ROI, and break with the old philosophy of embarking on a multitude of different projects," said Neil Saunders, analyst at GlobalData.

The company's net income reached $3.1 billion in the first quarter, compared with a net loss of $3.8 billion in the same period last year.

Reported per share, data scrutinized by the market, the profit is 31 cents, well above the 21 cents announced by analysts.

"For the first time in several quarters, Amazon finally seems to have a little wind at its back," according to Andrew Lipsman.

During the conference call, CEO Andy Jassy touted Amazon's massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI), which everyone has had in their mouths since the ChatGPT interface launched in November.

"Language models (which generate content) require years to build and billions of dollars" of investment, the official argued. "And there will only be a small number of companies willing to invest that much time and money, including Amazon."

Andy Jassy also spoke about AI about connected devices, which the group wants to use to create "the best personal assistant in the world", a philosophy already embodied by the assistant Alexa. "I think there's a significant business model behind it."

© 2023 AFP