Amazon beats expectations with huge $51 billion quarter, sales up 43%

In e-commerce, there’s Amazon, and then there’s everyone else. That’s partly what the company’s first-quarter results seem to argue.

The Seattle-based company reported $51 billion in sales this past quarter, while Wall Street had expected just under $50 billion ($49.9 billion). A year ago during the same period, sales were $35.71 billion. Net income was $1.6 billion. Guidance provided by Amazon for Q2 was between $51 billion and $54 billion.

Amazon doesn’t break out Alexa device sales from its overall results. However, last quarter CEO Jeff Bezos said the company had sold “tens of millions” of smart speaker devices and had “far exceeded” expectations for the product lineup.

Based on a range of third-party estimates, there may be as many as 50 million smart speakers in US homes. It’s likely that more than 70 percent of these are Amazon devices.

Last week, in a letter to shareholders, Bezos disclosed that the company had 100 million Prime members around the world. Based on a survey of 2,000 US Amazon shoppers in late 2017, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated that Prime members spend an average of $1,300, generating billions in annual revenue for the company.

Amazon also said in its shareholder letter that there were more than 300,000 US-based SMBs selling on the site, with nearly half (140,000) bringing in more than $100,000 in annual sales.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.