In the second-quarter of fiscal year 2018, Amazon reported a net profit of $2.5 billion, or $5.07 per share. This is more than double the expectations of analysts who forecasted $2.50 profit per share.
Yet again, the cloud computing and core retail businesses have helped Amazon to put strong quarterly revenue. Amazon couldn’t beat the Wall Street’s expectations when it comes to revenue. The company generated a revenue of $52.89 billion, up 39% from a year ago. Wall Street had forecasted a revenue of $53.37 billion.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud unit, again became a profit driver, generating a revenue of $6.11 billion, up 49% from a year ago. Further, the operating profit of AWS in the latest quarter is $1.64 billion, an increase of 79%.
Analysts had expected the cloud revenue to be $5.98 billion, and operating profit to be $1.47 billion.
The public cloud giant focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning during the quarter. In April this year, the company had tens of thousands of users of its intelligent services like SageMaker.
The company is bringing its AI-powered voice assistant Alexa to not only Echo smart speakers but also to devices from other companies like Ford Motor, Sonis, Jabra. At Build Conference 2018, AWS and Microsoft demonstrated an integration of Alexa and Cortana.
“We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are. There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.
“Our partners are creating a wide variety of new Alexa-enabled devices and experiences, including soundbars from Polk and Sonos; headphones from Jabra; smart home devices from ecobee and First Alert; Windows 10 PCs from Acer, HP, and Lenovo; and cars from automakers including BMW, Ford, and Toyota.”
Also read: FY18 Q4: Cloud business continues to fuel Microsoft’s revenue growth
Talking of the current quarter, Amazon forecasted its revenue for third quarter to be between $54 billion and $57.5 billion, with operating income ranging between $1.4 billion to $2.4 billion.
