This quarter also includes sales from Prime Day, one of Amazon’s biggest shopping events. Prime was a strong driver of Amazon’s subscription business, which grew 52% in the third quarter of 2018.
On a year-over-year basis, the company’s revenue was expected to grow 30.2% to $56.9 billion and spur a 5-fold jump in earnings to hit $3.29 per share.
In the quarter before this, the company had delivered remarkable earnings growth which surpassed analysts’ expectations but sales missed the mark, despite growing 39% to around $53 billion.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, said, “Amazon Business has now reached a $10 billion annual sales run rate and is serving millions of private and public-sector organizations in eight countries.”
OUTLOOK
For the coming quarter (4Q 2018), the e-commerce giant expects net sales to be between $66.5 billion and $72.5 billion, growing 10-20%. An unfavorable impact of approximately 80 basis points from foreign exchange rates is anticipated for the quarter. Operating income is now seen be about $2.1-3.6 billion.
Amazon, this time around, had introduced a new family of its Echo devices: the next-gen Echo Dot, Echo Plus, and Echo Show, along with Echo Auto for cars.
The e-retailer also launched Prime Book Box to all US Prime members. The subscription service delivers curated children’s books each one, two, or three months for just $22.99 per box.
In July, Amazon bought PillPack for $1 billion in a disruptive move signaling that the giant is getting ready to take the highly-regulated healthcare industry. Post the deal announcement, CVS Health (CVS), Rite Aid (RAD) and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) jointly lost more than $10 billion of market cap sending shivers across the pharma industry.
