Amazon prioritized growth over profits for years to establish itself as the world leader in e-commerce.
Thanks in part to its cloud computing side business, the company ended 2015 with a profit and had been profitable every year since.
In 2021 it achieved record profits of 33,364 million dollars (more than 30,000 million euros at the current exchange rate).
But in 2022 the red numbers have returned.
The company closed the year with losses of 2,722 million dollars, according to the results published this Thursday by the company.
Amazon continued to grow in revenue.
Its turnover increased by 9%, to 513,983 million dollars, a pace that has been maintained in the fourth quarter.
However, almost all of this growth was due to the services area, in which its business in the cloud is located, while the sale of products remained practically stagnant.
In fact, services have outpaced product sales, with $271 billion to $243 billion.
Cloud segment (Amazon Web Services, AWS) sales increased 29% to $80.1 billion, though they slowed in the fourth quarter.
Excluding the unfavorable impact of US$15.5 billion from exchange rate fluctuations throughout the year, the group's net sales would have grown 13% for the year.
Geographically, billing grows 13% in the United States, but falls 8% in the rest of the world.
The international business multiplies its operating losses, from 900 to 7,700 million dollars.
The business in North America reduces its operating profit from 7,300 to 2,200 million.
The company is increasingly reliant on AWS, which it accounts for separately and has an operating profit of $22.8 billion.
Costs grew more strongly than revenues.
In addition, the loss of value of its investee Rivian, manufacturer of electric cars, has weighed on its accounting result due to the valuation adjustment.
The loss of valuation before taxes for this concept has been 12,700 million dollars, compared to a revaluation of 11,800 million in 2021 that allowed it to score a record profit.
The company has announced the layoff of some 18,000 employees, but the figures show that the downsizing was already intense last year.
According to its own accounts, it closed 2021 with 1,608,000 employees and 2022, with 1,544,000 workers.
It is a reduction of 4%, much higher than the announced cut and it was mainly due to the fact that the company cut 3,000 employees in the fourth quarter, the strongest time for sales, unlike the previous year, when it added 140,000.
The company oversized in the pandemic and is now paying the consequences.
The company has published its forecasts for the first quarter of this year.
Net sales are expected to be between $121 and $126 billion, or grow between 4% and 8% compared to the first quarter of 2022. These forecasts anticipate an unfavorable impact of approximately 210 basis points from rates exchange.
Operating income is expected to be between $0 and $4 billion, up from $3.7 billion in the first quarter of 2022.
"In the short term, we face an uncertain economy, but we remain quite optimistic about the long-term opportunities for Amazon," chief executive Andy Jassy said in a statement.
“The vast majority of the total market segment share, both in global commerce and information technology, continues to reside in physical stores and local data centers;
And as this equation is constantly reversed, we believe that our leading customer experiences in these areas, coupled with the results of our continued hard work and inventiveness to improve every day, will lead to significant growth in the years to come.
If we also take into account our investments and innovations in other broad customer experiences (for example, streaming entertainment,
