Amazon doubles profits in Q2
Amazon announced $5.2 billion in profits in the second quarter, doubling its bottom line from the same quarter in 2019, despite spending more than $4 billion on COVID-19 initiatives since March.
While brick-and-mortar retailers have had to close stores during government-imposed lockdowns worldwide, Amazon hired approximately 175,000 people in the last four months as demand for its marketplace soared.
The company said revenue jumped 40% from $63.4 billion in 2019, to $88.9 billion.
Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totalled 517 million on June 30, 2020, compared with 510 million one year ago.
Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement: "This was another highly unusual quarter, and I couldn't be more proud of and grateful to our employees around the globe.
"As expected, we spent over $4 billion on incremental COVID-19 related costs in the quarter to help keep employees safe and deliver products to customers in this time of high demand: purchasing personal protective equipment, increasing cleaning of our facilities, following new safety process paths, adding new backup family care benefits, and paying a special thank you bonus of over $500 million to front-line employees and delivery partners.
"We've created over 175,000 new jobs since March and are in the process of bringing 125,000 of these employees into regular, full time positions. And third-party sales again grew faster this quarter than Amazon’s first-party sales.
"Even in this unpredictable time, we injected significant money into the economy this quarter, investing over $9 billon in capital projects, including fulfilment, transportation, and AWS (Amazon Web Services)."
