Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
- Amazon reported revenue of $108.52 billion for the first quarter of 2021, beating analysts' expectations.
- Sales were up 44% year-over-year and AWS saw gains of 32% over the same quarter last year.
- Strong sales are expected to continue into the second quarter, bolstered by Prime Day in June.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Amazon delivered a huge beat for its first-quarter earnings on Monday, with $108.52 billion in revenue powered by its AWS cloud-computing division and continued tailwinds for online shopping during the pandemic.
The company's share price jumped in after-hours trading, reaching a new all-time high of $3,651.
Amazon issued a rosy outlook for the upcoming quarter underlining the company's expectations of strong sales amid the vaccine rollout and economic recovery.
Here are the key numbers the company reported, compared with analysts' expectations averaged by Bloomberg:
- Revenue: $108.52 billion vs. $104.57 billion expected
- EPS (GAAP): $15.79 vs. $9.69 expected
- AWS Revenue: $13.5 billion vs. $13.09 billion expected
Total revenue increased 44% year-over-year from $75.5 billion, while AWS sales grew by 32% from $10.22 billion in that period. Profits increased to $8.1 billion, more than tripling the $2.5 billion posted in the first quarter of last year.
"In just 15 years, AWS has become a $54 billion annual sales run rate business competing against the world's largest technology companies, and its growth is accelerating," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
The company said its annual Prime Day mega deals event will be returning a summertime slot in June, after being pushed back to October last year due to disruption from the pandemic. The return should give a boost to second-quarter sales, which the company projects to land between $110.0 billion and $116.0 billion. It also said it expects to spend roughly $1.5 billion on COVID-related expenses.
Amazon topped 200 million Prime subscribers earlier this month, up from 150 million at the start of 2020.
"175 million Prime members have streamed shows and movies in the past year, and streaming hours are up more than 70% year over year," Bezos said.
Bezos is expected to discuss the results with analysts in an earnings call that kicks off at 5:30 p.m. ET. It will be his last earnings call as CEO, as he plans to step down on July 1 with former AWS CEO Andy Jassy taking over.
