AMAZON SALES UP 25% TO $38 BILLION IN SECOND QUARTER

Amazon, Inc. has reported another strong quarter of sales increases amid its current online retail domination.

Net sales increased 25 percent to $38 billion in the second quarter, compared with $30.4 billion in second quarter 2016. Excluding the $502 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 26 percent compared with second quarter 2016.

The increase is due in part by the online retailer’s global shopping holiday, Prime Day. The third annual Prime Day was the biggest global shopping event ever for Amazon with more new Prime members joining Prime than any single day in Amazon history. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs participated in the global event and sold more than 40 million units.

Prime Day was the biggest sales event ever for Amazon devices worldwide, including record sales for Echo, Fire tablets, and Kindle devices. The Echo Dot was the best-selling Amazon device this Prime Day and was the best-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across Amazon globally. The All-New Element 55-inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV — Amazon Fire TV Edition was the best-selling TV deal in Amazon history, selling through record units in less than four hours.

“Our teams remain heads-down and focused on customers,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “In the last few months, we launched Echo Show (our newest Echo device with a video screen), introduced calling and messaging via Alexa on all Echo devices, debuted Inside Edge on Prime Video (the first of 18 Indian Original Series), introduced Amazon Channels in both the U.K. and Germany, launched four new Fire tablets, expanded Amazon Fresh to Germany, launched Prime Now in Singapore, launched our 25th airplane with Prime Air, hired more than 30,000 new employees, opened three new Amazon Books stores, launched more than 400 significant AWS features and services, migrated more than 7,000 databases using AWS Database Migration Service, and held our third annual Prime Day — signing up more Prime members than ever before. It’s energizing to invent on behalf of customers, and we continue to see many high-quality opportunities to invest.”

Looking ahead, Amazon’s net sales for the third quarter are expected to be between $39.25 billion and $41.75 billion, or to grow between 20 percent and 28 percent compared with third quarter 2016.