Amazon Profits Top $3 Billion For The First Time; Cautious Of Dip In India Revenue Due To New Regulations

Amazon’s profit topped $3 billion for the first time in the last quarter of 2018 (Q4), jumping from $1.9 billion recorded in the same period last year, a 63 per cent increase, reports Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Also, revenues increased to $72.4 billion, up 20 per cent from the same period a year ago. Amazon’s cloud services business AWS’s sales grew by 45 per cent from last year to $7.4 billion.

Commenting on the strong performance of Alexa and Amazon’s smart home product range, Jeff Bezos, CEO said, "Alexa was very busy during her holiday season. Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally, and customers purchased millions more devices from the Echo family compared to last year.”

India Concerns Remain

However, the company warned that its revenue from India operations could take a hit due to new government regulations that came into force on 1 February.

“We do believe that India remains a good long-term opportunity,” Amazon’s financial chief, Brian Olsavsky said. “As far as the change of this rule, these regulations, we’re still evaluating them and there’s a bit of uncertainty at this point.”

Amazon has also collaborated with ICICI Bank to launch the Amazon ICICI Bank credit card to pre-selected customers in India which will offer Prime members five per cent in reward points for their purchases on amazon.in.

Also Read: Amazon To Soon Launch Prime Video Channels In India; Hunt Currently On For Chief Of Operations