Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Results

Net sales for the quarter increased 12.5 percent, to $52.28 billion from $46.45 billion last year. Net sales for the fiscal year increased 9.3 percent, to $163.22 billion from $149.35 billion last year. Net income for the fourth quarter was $1.389 billion, or $3.13 per diluted share, compared to $1.097 billion, or $2.47 per diluted share last year. This year’s fourth quarter was negatively impacted by incremental expense related to COVID-19 premium wages and sanitation costs of $281 million pretax ($0.47 per diluted share) and a $36 million pretax charge ($0.06 per diluted share) related to the prepayment of $1.5 billion of debt. These items were partially offset by an $84 million pretax benefit ($0.15 per diluted share) for the partial reversal of a reserve of $123 million pretax ($0.22 cents per diluted share), related to a product tax assessment taken in the fourth quarter of last year. Net income for the fiscal year was $4.00 billion, or $9.02 per diluted share, compared to $3.66 billion, or $8.26 per diluted share in the prior year.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its StatShot report for April 2024 reflecting reported revenue for Trade (Consumer Books), Religious Presses, Higher Education Course Materials, PreK-12 Instructional Materials and Professional Publishing. Total revenues across all categories for April 2024 were up 18.3% as compared to April 2023, coming in at $947.5 million. Year-to-date revenues were up 4.2%, at $4.1 billion for the first four months of the year. Trade (Consumer Books) revenues were up 20.6% in April, coming in at $725.1 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of April, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were up 16.6%, coming in at $252.6 million; Paperbacks were up 20.3%, with $249.9 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 34.5% to $8.2 million; and Special Bindings were up 13.7%, with $14.4 million in revenue. eBook revenues were up 16.8% for the month as compared to April 2023 for a total of $83.1 million, and the Digital Audio format was up 54.6% for April, coming in at $100.0 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 15.0% coming in at $800 thousand.

Fourth-quarter service performance for July 1 through July 30 included: First-Class Mail: Delivered 89.0 percent of First-Class Mail on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 1.5 percentage points from the third quarter. Marketing Mail: Delivered 92.6 percent of Marketing Mail on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 1.6 percentage points from the third quarter. Periodicals: Delivered 82.7 percent of Periodicals on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 3.4 percentage points from the third quarter. For the week of July 24 - 30, Marketing Mail maintained the highest service performance level (93.7 percent) reported for that category in nearly five years, since the week of August 20-26, 2016 (93.9 percent).