Amazon revenue grew 14.7% in the third quarter, to 127,101 million dollars (a similar figure in euros).
However, profitability deteriorated and net profit fell 9% to 2,872 million dollars.
In the accumulated of the first nine months, it still suffers losses of 3,000 million due to the deterioration of its investment in Rivian, its electric vehicle investee, which caused red numbers in both the first and second quarters of the year.
Amazon expects a sharp slowdown in growth in the Christmas quarter.
It expects revenue of $140 billion to $148 billion, implying 2% to 8% growth, well below the $155 billion analysts had expected.
In addition, the company has said that its operating profit will be between 0 and 4,000 million in that quarter, the strongest for its sales.
As a result, its shares plummeted between 10% and 20% in out-of-session trading.
The company blames much of that slowdown on the strength of the dollar, which will subtract 4.6 percentage points from growth in the fourth quarter.
"We have a set of initiatives that we are methodically working on that we believe will lead to a stronger cost structure for the business going forward," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement. in which he added: “Clearly, many things are happening in the macroeconomic environment and we will balance our investments to be more agile without compromising our main long-term strategic commitments.
What will not change is our manic focus on the customer experience, and we feel confident that we are poised to deliver a great customer experience this holiday shopping season,” he added.
The disappointment of investors with Amazon follows those who have suffered with the accounts of other technology giants such as Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and, above all, Meta (Facebook), which has plummeted 24.56% on the stock market this Thursday after announcing that his profit had been halved, weighed down by his bet on the metaverse, until now ruinous.
Amazon, in particular, was one of the companies to benefit the most from the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, but has seen sales drop as people have physically returned to work and shopped in person.
The company only had operating profit in the third quarter in its AWS segment, of cloud computing services, which earned $5.4 billion, compared to $4.9 billion in the third quarter of 2021. However, in its commercial business it had operating losses of 400 million in the North American division and 2,500 million in the international division, weighed down by the strength of the dollar.
Operating cash flow is down 27% to $39.7 billion in the last twelve months, compared to $54.7 billion a year earlier and free cash flow, which discounts investments, has been negative by 19,700 million dollars in the last year, compared to an inflow of 2,600 million dollars in the previous 12 months.