Amazon's profit engines are humming, cushioning the blow from the retail slowdown
Amazon just reported its slowest revenue growth in over four years and missed estimates. But investors found plenty of relief elsewhere.
That's because cloud computing and advertising, the areas where Amazon generates the heftiest profits, showed rapid expansion.
Amazon Web Services, which provides remote computing, storage and database services, reported a revenue jump of almost 40% from a year ago to $17.8 billion, beating the $17.37 billion expected by analysts. AWS' operating income of $5.29 billion accounted for more than 100% of Amazon's total operating profit for the quarter.
Amazon also surprised investors by breaking out advertising as a separate business for the first time. Ad revenue jumped 32% to $9.7 billion, almost equaling Google's ad growth rate for the quarter. Until now, Amazon has grouped ads into its “other” business segment, leaving analysts and investors guessing about its size.
“The story for the fourth quarter is different from the second and third quarter to the extent that the high-margin businesses — cloud computing and advertising — were able to offset a slowdown in e-commerce,” said Tom Forte, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in an interview on Thursday with CNBC's “Closing Bell.” Forte recommends buying Amazon shares.
The stock soared as much as 15% on Friday, a rally that would be the sharpest since 2012 should it hold through the day.
Fourth-quarter sales rose 9.4% from a year earlier to $137.4 billion, falling just short of the $137.6 billion in revenue projected by analysts. It marked Amazon's first period of single-digit growth since the third quarter of 2017, and represented a major slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2020, when sales jumped 43.6%.
Meanwhile, revenue from Amazon's online stores dropped 1% to $66.1 billion. Its U.S. segment recorded $206 million in operating losses, while the international side lost $1.63 billion. The retail business has been battling through supply chain problems, a labor market crunch that's persisted because of the Covid-19 omicron variant and inflationary pressures on consumers.
Amazon responded by spending big on wage hikes and by increasing incentives to lure workers. It also used its balance sheet to secure space on ships at a time when the cost of procuring and moving cargo containers skyrocketed, and to pay for coronavirus-related safety measures to protect front-line workers.
Leading up to the earnings report, investors had turned bearish. Amazon was the worst-performing Big Tech stock last year, and was down 17% in 2022 as of Thursday's close.
In addition to providing uplifting cloud and ad revenue numbers, the company indicated that brighter days are also ahead for retail.
Amazon guided for first-quarter operating income of between $3 billion and $6 billion, suggesting it expects to get pandemic costs under control soon. And as case numbers hopefully keep dropping, Amazon appears poised to take advantage of the massive investments it's made in expanding its warehouses and building out its delivery network for speedier service.
CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the earnings call after the report that Amazon is now in a better position to handle labor and supply chain challenges.
“We do see the sun coming out and getting better here over the next number of quarters,” Olsavsky said.
亚马逊刚刚公布了四年多来最慢的收入增长，但未达到预期。但投资者在其他地方发现了很多宽慰。 那是因为云计算和广告，亚马逊产生最大利润的领域，显示出快速扩张。
提供远程计算、存储和数据库服务的亚马逊网络服务报告收入同比增长近 40% 至 178 亿美元，超过分析师预期的 173.7 亿美元。 AWS 52.9 亿美元的营业收入占亚马逊本季度总营业利润的 100% 以上。
亚马逊还首次将广告作为一项独立业务打破了投资者的预期。广告收入增长 32% 至 97 亿美元，几乎与谷歌本季度的广告增长率持平。到目前为止，亚马逊一直将广告归入其“其他”业务部门，让分析师和投资者猜测其规模。
“第四季度的情况与第二季度和第三季度不同，因为高利润业务——云计算和广告——能够抵消电子商务放缓的影响，”D.A.分析师汤姆·福特说。戴维森在周四接受 CNBC 的“闭幕钟声”采访时说。 Forte 建议购买亚马逊股票。
该股周五飙升了 15%，如果该股全天持续上涨，这将是自 2012 年以来的最大涨幅。
第四季度销售额同比增长 9.4% 至 1374 亿美元，略低于分析师预测的 1376 亿美元收入。这标志着亚马逊自 2017 年第三季度以来首次实现个位数增长，与 2020 年第四季度相比大幅放缓，当时销售额增长了 43.6%。
与此同时，亚马逊在线商店的收入下降了 1%，至 661 亿美元。其美国业务录得 2.06 亿美元的经营亏损，而国际业务则亏损 16.3 亿美元。零售业务一直在与供应链问题作斗争，这是由于 Covid-19 omicron 变体和消费者面临的通胀压力而持续存在的劳动力市场紧缩。
亚马逊的回应是在加薪上投入巨资，并增加吸引工人的激励措施。在采购和运输货物集装箱的成本飙升之际，它还利用其资产负债表来确保船上空间，并支付与冠状病毒相关的安全措施以保护一线工人。
在收益报告发布之前，投资者已经转为看跌。亚马逊是去年表现最差的大型科技股，截至周四收盘，2022 年下跌了 17%。
除了提供令人振奋的云和广告收入数字外，该公司还表示零售业也将迎来光明的日子。
亚马逊指导第一季度营业收入在 30 亿美元至 60 亿美元之间，这表明它预计将很快控制大流行病的成本。随着案件数量有望继续下降，亚马逊似乎准备利用其在扩大仓库和建立交付网络以提供更快服务方面的巨额投资。
首席财务官 Brian Olsavsky 在报告发布后的财报电话会议上表示，亚马逊现在能够更好地应对劳动力和供应链挑战。
“在接下来的几个季度里，我们确实看到太阳出来并变得更好，”奥尔萨夫斯基说。
