Amidst rampant pay-cuts, lay-offs and widespread job crunch as a result of the Covid-19 induced global, Amazon’s impressive quarterly profit comes as a ray of hope in the recruitment market.
Owing to an increase in global demand amidst the pandemic and, hence, escalated sales, Amazon has recorded $345 million worth of net quarterly profit in its international business. This comes as the first such profit recorded quarterly in the world in many years.
Prior to this feat the company has borne losses as hefty as $900 million in certain quarters, on a global scale. Just the previous financial year, in its second quarter, the company’s international business was set back by $600 million.
This year, Amazon saw an overall rise of 40 percent ($88.9 billion) in the net sales in the second quarter, as compared to $63.4 billion in the second quarter of 2019. The chief financial officer of the company, Brian Olsavsky said, “We are seeing in established countries an acceleration in adoption of Prime benefits, and we pushed videos, devices and music.” The maximum international business that Amazon gets is from nations like Europe, India and Japan.
When talking about India, the firm reported that it is contemplating on going big with its investments in the country and is aiming at expansion into new markets. The CFO exclaimed that, “In India, we are focused on digitising Indian sellers and small businesses and we have launched features for digitisation. There is great work being done by the team. They have goals there of getting more sellers and hiring more people.”India is listed as the primary country to globally kickstart Amazon’s Prime Day event slated for August 6 and 7.
Amazon has also launched Local Shops on Amazon.in to cater to vendors that have physical stores so as to enable them to provide services to people in their local vicinity. Seller registration and options to manage the account were also made available in Hindi this year. Amazon reported that over 10,000 sellers have used Hindi for Amazon.in registration.
Despite having the most profitable quarter, giving figures that exceeded the investors expectations and revenue that aligned with the Wall Street conjectures, the company still records slow growth. Amazon is currently the third most profitable firm after Apple and Microsoft. The CFO also informed the media that this year the company aims to scale up its investments and expenditures in comparison to the bygone year. This means that the profits might be lesser.
Amazon relies heavily on its smart home devices for profits. Also, its central and most significant asset, Amazon Web Services, continues to be the largest benefactor to the company’s net income. Furthermore, Amazon plans to reduce its activities in China, where it already has a limited presence. It is aiming at shutting services to the third-party retailers in China.
