Amazon posts record profit growth as sales soar

The online retailer recorded net income of $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in the quarter ending on June 30, up from $197m (£150.4m) during the same period the previous year.

Operating income more than quadrupled to $3bn (£2.3bn) during the period, up from $628m (£480m) the previous year.

Sales surged 39% year on year to $52.9bn (£40.4bn), bolstered by a 44% jump in retail sales in North America to $32.2bn (£24.6bn) and nearly 50% worth of increased sales of its cloud services arm Amazon Web Services to $6.1bn (£4.6bn).

Sales across the retailer’s “other” categories, which includes advertising revenue, also more than doubled to $2.2bn (£1.7bn).

Amazon’s chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky hailed the results as “a strong quarter”, which he attributed to the “continued strength in some of our most profitable areas”.

Chief executive Jeff Bezos said: “We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are.

“There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year.”