Amazon shines in the Christmas business - but the cloud disappointed!

Amazon shines in the Christmas business - but the cloud disappointed!

Amazon exceeded expectations with an impressive quarterly result. In the fourth quarter of 2024, net sales rose ten percent to a whopping $ 187.8 billion (181.27 billion euros), as recently from OE24 . It is particularly noteworthy that sales in the e-commerce area with $ 75.56 billion was over the forecast. CEO Andy Jassy announced that the Christmas shopping season was the most successful for Amazon so far, but the view of the first quarter was disappointing, which led to a decline in shares by more than four percent.

growth and challenges

During sales in the Cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS), 19 percent increased to $ 28.79 billion, the growth behind the market expectations remained. Overall, analysts had hoped for more sales from the cloud division. The competition in the AI ​​sector, especially through cheaper alternatives such as Deepseek, is a challenge for Amazon. Despite this setback, Amazon planned massive investments of around $ 100 billion for the expansion of their infrastructure, especially with regard to data centers for artificial intelligence, such as It-Times explained in detail.

Amazon recorded an operational result of $ 21.2 billion and a net result of $ 20 billion. This shows significant profitability and strong growth compared to the previous year. In North America in particular, sales grew by ten percent to $ 115.6 billion. The international segment, on the other hand, rose eight percent to $ 43.4 billion, with a remarkable operational result of over one billion dollars, which is a positive turn compared to the previous year.