Amazon delivers mixed bag of results for second quarter

Amazon has turned in a mixed bag of results for its fiscal second quarter, coming up short of Wall Street expectations in revenue but beating them on profits.

During the three-month period ended June 30, the Seattle-based company reported profit of 7.78 billion dollars (£5.57 billion), or 15.12 dollars per share, compared with 5.24 billion dollars (£3.75 billion), or 10.30 dollars a share, during the year-ago period.

Revenue jumped 27% to 113.08 billion dollars (£81 billion).

Analysts surveyed by FactSet on average expected 115.42 billion dollars (£82.67 billion) in quarterly revenue and per-share earnings of 12.28 dollars.

Shares in Amazon fell more than 6% in after-market trading.

Amazon is one of the few retailers that has prospered during the pandemic.

As physical stores that sold non-essential goods such as clothing temporarily closed, people stuck at home turned to Amazon to buy groceries, cleaning supplies and more.

But the latest quarter shows that Amazon’s top line was a bit challenged.

Besides online shopping, Amazon’s other businesses expanded too.

Sales at its cloud-computing business, which helps power the online operations of Netflix, McDonald’s and other companies, grew 37% in the quarter.

And at its unit that includes its advertising business, where brands pay to get their products to show up first when shoppers search on the site, sales rose 87%.

It was the company’s last quarter with founder Jeff Bezos as chief executive.

He stepped down to become executive chairman in early July.

Andrew Jassy, who headed its cloud-computing unit Amazon Web Services, succeeded him.