Amazon announced Thursday that it had achieved a turnover of 149.2 billion dollars (around 131 billion euros) in the fourth quarter of 2022. This result is higher than its forecasts and market expectations, in a context where the inflation weighs on consumer spending.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, Amazon and even Apple all three published quarterly results or outlook on Thursday that disappointed: the market was hoping for more resistance to the economic crisis.
The e-commerce giant has also made cautious forecasts for the current quarter in its results press release: revenues of between 121 and 126 billion dollars, instead of the expected 125 billion (around 115 billion euros) by Factset analyst consensus.
Managing Director Andy Jassy cited “uncertain short-term economics” and “encouraging progress in terms of cost reductions”.
Nearly 12% of the global online market
The American group is also counting on an operating profit of between 0 and 4 billion dollars (about 3.7 billion euros).
The market expects 4 billion for this key indicator of the platform's profitability.
On Wall Street, the American Stock Exchange, its title lost more than 6% during electronic trading after the close.
To regain their margins, companies rely on artificial intelligence (AI), personalized recommendation algorithms with ever finer advertising targeting, with ever less data.
The bosses of the giants of the technology sector have also all expressed their enthusiasm for the advent of generative AI, which has unleashed passions since the release this fall of ChatGPT.
This software from the OpenAI start-up, financed in particular by Microsoft, can write all kinds of texts and lines of computer code on request.
Read alsoChatGPT: 5 minutes to understand this artificial intelligence that analyzes and writes (almost) like us
In the meantime, Amazon announced in early January the elimination of more than 18,000 jobs.
At the end of September, it had 1.54 million employees worldwide, not including seasonal workers recruited during periods of increased activity, particularly during the holiday season.
AWS, its cloud branch (remote computing), also disappointed with a turnover of 21.4 billion (19.8 billion euros), and an operating profit down to 5.2 billion (4, 8 billion euros), a sign that the very buoyant remote computing sector is no longer impervious to the economic situation.
This is a blow for Amazon, whose profits "depend more and more on AWS", underlines Andrew Lipsman, analyst at Insider Intelligence.
According to this firm, by the end of 2023, Amazon's online sales worldwide will grow by 14% to 746.2 billion dollars (690 billion euros), representing a global market share of 11, 8%.