The e-commerce giant said Thursday it had made $134.4 billion in revenue and net profit of $6.7 billion, while analysts had expected $131.5 billion and $3.64 billion, respectively.

These two figures, up significantly year-on-year, are also well above the group's own forecasts.

"We have continued to lower our costs in our distribution network, while delivering our Prime customers faster than ever," said Andy Jassy, the boss of Amazon, quoted in the statement.

The company's stock gained nearly 7% in electronic trading after the Wall Street Stock Exchange closed.

In North America, the e-commerce platform saw its revenue rise 11% to $82.5 billion, of which it generated $3.2 billion in operating profit, instead of a loss of several hundred million in the same period last year.

AWS, the cloud arm of the company, made $22 billion in revenue (+12%), but only $5.4 billion in operating profit, a figure lower than last year.

"AWS' growth has stabilized as customers have begun a transition from optimizing costs to implementing new ways of working," Jassy said.

'More optimistic'

He said Amazon has deployed new so-called generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to allow companies to train their own language models, the computer programs on which conversational software like ChatGPT is based.

Analysts expected the U.S. group to "show clear signs of resuming growth rates in its core retail, advertising and cloud businesses to paint a more optimistic picture for the second half of the year," said Andrew Lipsman of Insider Intelligence.

In the first quarter, revenue from the cloud, through the dedicated subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS), and advertising had offset the zero growth in online sales, which had been stalling for more than a year.

Amazon must also "convince investors that it is not falling behind Google and Microsoft in the field of AI, which could have longer-term repercussions for AWS," said the analyst.

After a difficult 2022, the tech giants have largely rebounded despite an economic context still marked by inflation and high interest rates.

Most have thanked thousands of people this winter, improving their margins.

AI

Over the period from April to June, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) achieved its first quarter with double-digit revenue growth since the end of 2021. Its better-than-expected revenues ($32 billion) and profits ($7.8 billion) delighted Wall Street.

Alphabet (Google) also pleased the market, thanks in particular to its cloud business (remote computing), whose turnover increased by 27% in one year, to $ 8 billion, after making its first operating profit in the previous quarter.

The two giants of digital advertising can thus invest more and more in the so-called generative artificial intelligence, at the center of all discussions in Silicon Valley since the phenomenal launch of ChatGPT at the end of last year.

Microsoft is leading the race thanks to its longstanding investments in OpenAI (ChatGPT), but all of its rivals have set out to rapidly deploy new AI and generative AI tools, on their cloud platforms, online services, and office and collaboration software.

© 2023 AFP