Amazon Surprises With Earnings Beat; Sales Up 20 Percent In Q2 2015

Shares surge in after-hours trading on news of quarterly net gains.

Ginny Marvin on July 23, 2015

Amazon headquarters, Seattle, Washington

Amazon reported a 20 percent jump in sales to $23.18 billion in the second quarter of 2015, compared to sales of $19.34 billion in Q2 2014.

In a surprising shift, net income was positive in Q2, coming in at $92 million, or $0.19 per share for the quarter. That compares to a net loss of $126 million, or $0.27 per share a year ago. Analysts were predicting to see another quarter of losses, estimating a $0.14 loss per share this quarter. Shares were trading up 15 percent on the news.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pointed to many of the achievements of the quarter, as well as Prime Day, held on July 15, in a statement:

“We unveiled Amazon Business, opened Amazon Mexico, launched Prime free same-day, rolled out our ninth Prime Now city, broke our Black Friday record with the first-ever Prime Day, received 11 Emmy nominations for Transparent, debuted six new kids pilots, brought Echo to general availability, introduced the Alexa Skills Kit and Alexa Voice Service, opened FBA Small and Light, continued to double down on our fastest growing geography — India, launched 350 significant AWS features and services so far this year (ahead of last year’s pace), introduced AWS Educate, and entered into agreements for new solar and wind farms — enough to exceed our 2016 goal of 40% renewable energy.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) stood out this quarter, with sales growth of 81 percent year-over-year to $1.824 billion. AWS operating income jumped from $77 million in Q2 2014 to $391 million in Q2 2015.

North American marketplace sales increased 26 percent in Q2 to $13.796 billion, and operating income rose from $329 million for the quarter last year to $703 million.

amazon earnings 2015 q2

Slides and recording of the earnings call can be found here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

As Third Door Media’s paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.