Amazon Doubles Profits and Sales Increase by 41%

Amazon the online retailer doubles profits in the past three months of online operations.

Recession, what recession cries Amazon. Their net profits from for the three months to June 2008 doubled to a whopping $158million in what is considered the weakest quarter in their financial year.

Sales in their traditional areas of books and CDs rose by 31% whilst their entry into general merchanise increased by 58% and their shares jumped 8.6% in after hours trading — many believe that people are shopping more online because of the high petrol prices.

Chief executive Jeff Bezos said higher fuel prices may give the company a “relative advantage” over other retailers. “Even just driving 10 miles these days is a few dollars worth of gasoline,” he said. “And consumers, we suspect, are beginning to take that into account and try to do trip consolidation.”

Although of course the growth of the internet is still soaring and the number of Amazon accounts is up 18% to more than 81m.

UK managing director Brian McBride said:

“Without a doubt there is clearly a global economic problem here and nobody is immune from that, but we’re not a very good bellwether. At the end of the day the trend of the internet is still happening, people are still preferring to come online, and it’s a much more transparent shopping experience - you can see what the prices are.”

Amazon offers free shipping for orders over $25 so we guess their average order value rose also as there’s an incentive to purchase a little more to save the shipping costs. Well done Amazon.

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