Amazon Reaps A Pandemic Windfall, Posts Biggest Profit In Its 26-year History

Online retail behemoth Amazon posted the biggest profit in its 26-year history at $5.2 billion with the company’s second-quarter revenue jumping by a whopping 40% to $88.9 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.

With brick-and-mortar retailers and neighborhood store-owners prohibited from selling during the government-imposed lockdowns, Amazon saw a massive surge IN demand for its products and services. The company also loosened its purse string spending $4 billion between April and June to clean warehouses, hire 175,000 new employees and provide temporary wage hikes for its existing staff.

Online store sales zoomed to $45.9 billion in the second quarter. Merchants paid Amazon more to fulfill and sponsor their products in order to reach the company's loyal customers resulting in a 52% and 41% jump in seller services revenue and other revenue such as from ads, respectively.

Amazon's cloud services also saw higher demand as companies switched to virtual offices in the pandemic. Revenue from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which sells data storage and computing power in the cloud, rose nearly 29% to $10.81 billion.

Indicating continued momentum, the Seattle-based company said on Thursday that its revenue in the current quarter will range from $87 billion to $93 billion with operating income of $2 billion to $5 billion.

Amazon increased its workforce 34% to 876,800 full- and part-time employees at the end of the quarter. The company announced plans to hire 175,000 new workers this year — and temporarily boosted wages — to keep up with Covid-19 related demand.