Amazon performed better than anticipated with a sharp rise in sales and income in the third quarter to September 30.
The tech giant’s net sales increased 13% to $143.1bn (£118.4bn), compared with $127.1bn (£104.8bn) in the third quarter of 2022.
North America sales grew 11% year-on-year to $87.9bn (£72.5bn), while international sales increased 16% to $32.1bn (£26.4bn).
Amazon posted net product sales growth to $63.1bn (£52bn) compared to $59.3bn (£48.9bn) in the same period last year, while its Amazon Web Services sales increased 12% to £23.1bn (£19bn).
Operating income rose to $11.2bn (£9.2bn), compared with $2.5bn (£2bn) in the third quarter of 2022. Net income totalled $9.9bn (£8.1bn), compared with $2.9bn (£2.39bn) a year ago.
Moving into the fourth quarter, Amazon said it sold “hundreds of millions” of items globally during its two-day October Prime Day and said Prime members across 19 countries saved more than $1bn (£0.8bn) through deals.
It also announced it will hire 250,000 full-time, part-time and seasonal employees in the US over the festive season as well as 15,000 seasonal roles across the UK.
Amazon expects its net sales for the fourth quarter to be between $160bn (£131.9bn) and $167bn (£137.7bn) and operating income is expected to be between $7bn (£5.7bn) and $11bn (£9bn),
Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy said: “We had a strong third quarter as our cost to serve and speed of delivery in our stores business took another step forward, our AWS growth continued to stabilise, our advertising revenue grew robustly and overall operating income and free cash flow rose significantly.
“The benefits of moving from a single national fulfilment network in the US to eight distinct regions are exceeding our optimistic expectations and perhaps most importantly, putting us on pace to deliver the fastest delivery speeds for Prime customers in our 29-year history.”
No comments yet