Amazon has another record-breaking quarter

Ecommerce giant Amazon has posted its third successive quarter of record breaking results beating analysts' expectations.

Sales in the second quarter leapt by 31.1% to $30.4bn while net profits were up 89% at $857m. Margin, a closely watched metric by analysts, doubled to 4.2%, which will be seen as a good sign the company is controlling costs. Amazon has traditionally operated on wafer thin margins due to the investment it makes in the business.

The quarter was boosted by a strong performance of its Prime service, which was also buoyed by the launch of its new video streaming service. It also showed strong growth in its cloud unit Amazon Web Services, which is believed by analysts to be the next big area of growth for the business.

Profitability in quarter three, however, is expected to be hit as the business invests heavily in the lead up to its busiest quarter, the holiday season.

Amazon recently signed a deal with the British Civil Aviation Authority to investigate the viability of its drone delivery service.