Amazon’s hardware and cloud services helped it beat Q1 earnings expectations

Amazon has posted its fiscal first-quarter earnings, and unlike the year-ago quarter, it hasn’t posted a massive loss but rather a 28 per cent yoy growth.

The company reported net revenue of $29.1 billion for the period that ended on 31 March, whereas this time last year it recorded a $53 million loss. It also posted a net income of $513 million, or $1.07 a share, which is the most profit its ever seen during a quarter, and Amazon’s CEO seems to think its devices are the reason why it’s doing so well.

“Amazon devices are the top selling products on Amazon, and customers purchased more than twice as many Fire tablets than first quarter last year,” Bezos said in a statement. “Echo too is off to an incredible start, and we can’t yet manage to keep it in stock despite all efforts. We’re building premium products at non-premium prices”.

Despite the Fire phone from a few years ago, Amazon is becoming known as a stellar gadget-maker. However, the company’s most profitable biz is still its Amazon Web Services cloud computing division, which posted a profit of $604 million and a revenue of $2.6 billion, a 64 per cent year-over-year increase.

But not everything was on the up and up. Amazon’s international business lost $121 million in operating income last quarter, but that’s less than the $158 million it lost in the year-ago quarter. Still, international revenue grew to $9.57 billion from $7.75 billion, also beating expectations.

Wall Street analysts had expected Amazon to post earnings of 58 cents per share on $27.98 billion in revenue, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate, meaning the online retailer completely toppled their expectations.

These quarterly results mark the first time since 2012 that Amazon has turned a profit in four straight quarters. As a result, shares spiked more than 10 per cent in after-hours trading.