Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) on Thursday posted second-quarter earnings per diluted share of 65 cents, blowing past estimates of 35 cents per share and more than tripling the second-quarter 2022 results.
Revenue year on year rose 11% to $134.4 billion. Operating income jumped to $7.7 billion from $4.4 billion. Net income was $6.7 billion, compared with a $2 billion net loss in the 2022 quarter.
Operating cash flow rose 74% to $61.8 billion for the trailing 12 months.
The second-quarter net income figures include a $200 million pretax valuation gain on Amazon’s share ownership in electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian Automotive. That was compared to a pretax valuation loss of $3.9 billion in the 2022 quarter.
The company guided favorably in the third quarter, with revenue expected to grow 9% to 13%, and operating income between $5.5 billion and $8.5 billion, up from $2.2 billion in the third quarter of 2022.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the results was the success of Amazon’s regionalization program. Amazon has transformed one national network into eight separate regions serving smaller geographies. The company keeps large quantities of inventory in each region, making it faster and less expensive to get these products to customers, it said.
According to CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon has experienced a 20% reduction in the number of touches per delivered package, a 19% reduction in miles travelled, and a more than 1,000 basis point increase in deliveries fulfilled within a region. “This is a lot of progress,” he told analysts on the post-earnings call.
Shares rose 6.6% in after-hours trading.