AMAZON HITS $51 BILLION IN SALES IN FIRST QUARTER, RAISES PRICE OF PRIME MEMBERSHIP

Online mega-retailer Amazon has reported a staggering net sales increase of 43 percent to $51 billion in the first quarter of 2018, compared with $35.7 billion in the same period last year. This jump was due to growth in the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud service and advertising business.

Net income more than doubled to $1.6 billion, underscoring the company’s renewed focus on growing profit margins.

AWS sales grew 49 percent year-over-year, reaccelerating its growth rate, which had dropped to as low as 42 percent in the third quarter of last year. It generated $1.4 billion in operating income, accounting for 73 percent of Amazon’s total operating income.

“AWS had the unusual advantage of a seven-year head start before facing like-minded competition, and the team has never slowed down,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “As a result, the AWS services are by far the most evolved and most functionality-rich. AWS lets developers do more and be nimbler, and it continues to get even better every day. That’s why you’re seeing this remarkable acceleration in AWS growth, now for two quarters in a row. A huge thank you to all our AWS customers, and you can be sure we’ll keep working hard for you.”

Its subscription services revenue, which includes Prime memberships, also grew 60 percent to $3.1 billion. Amazon disclosed for the first time last week that Prime had more than 100 million members worldwide.

Separately, Amazon also announced it would raise the price of Prime membership by 20 percent to $119 a year. It also extended its streaming partnership with the NFL until 2019.

Amazon gave second-quarter revenue guidance in the range of $51.0 billion to $54.0 billion, in-line with street estimate of $52.2 billion.