Amazon.com, Inc. announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2024. Net sales increased 13% to $143.3 billion in the first quarter, compared with $127.4 billion in first quarter 2023. International segment sales increased 10% year-over-year to $31.9 billion, or increased 11% excluding changes in foreign exchange rates. North America segment sales increased 12% year-over-year to $86.3 billion. International segment sales increased 10% year-over-year to $31.9 billion, or increased 11% excluding changes in foreign exchange rates. AWS segment sales increased 17% year-over-year to $25.0 billion.
Operating income increased to $15.3 billion in the first quarter, compared with $4.8 billion in first quarter 2023. Net income increased to $10.4 billion in the first quarter. The company’s revenue from advertising services was $11.8 billion in the first quarter, up from $9.5 billion in Q1 2023. In Q4 2024, however, the ad revenue was at $14.6 billion.
“It was a good start to the year across the business, and you can see that in both our customer experience improvements and financial results,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon President and CEO. “The combination of companies renewing their infrastructure modernization efforts and the appeal of AWS’s AI capabilities is reaccelerating AWS’s growth rate (now at a $100 billion annual revenue run rate); our Stores business continues to expand selection, provide everyday low prices, and accelerate delivery speed (setting another record on speed for Prime customers in Q1) while lowering our cost to serve; and, our Advertising efforts continue to benefit from the growth of our Stores and Prime Video businesses.”
He added, “It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward.”
In its highlights, Amazon listed the release of 20 films and series from Amazon MGM Studios, including the debut season of Fallout, which attracted more than 65 million viewers worldwide and has become the second most watched title ever on Prime Video through its first 16 days; Road House, which attracted more than 50 million viewers worldwide in its first two weekends streaming on Prime Video, the biggest debut ever for an Amazon MGM Studios-produced film; Hazbin Hotel, which had the most total global viewers on its opening weekend for a new animated series on Prime Video; and The Beekeeper, which ranked in the top-10 of theatrical releases by revenue globally in the first quarter.
The company also highlighted its plans to create a new series from MrBeast, the world’s most-subscribed YouTube creator. Beast Games is set to have 1,000 contestants competing for $5 million—the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming. The series will premiere on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories and is based on MrBeast’s popular show.
Amazon announced a global collaboration that will bring Fire TV to Panasonic’s new smart TVs. Customers will get the benefits of Fire TV’s personalized streaming and access to Alexa, combined with Panasonic’s smart TVs. Amazon also announced Matter Casting on Fire TV and Echo Show 15—an industry-first implementation of this practice. Matter Casting lets customers stream and control content on their television or streaming stick from their mobile app. Customers can begin watching a movie from Prime Video on their phone, and cast it to a compatible Fire TV or Echo Show 15 to continue watching on a bigger screen.
Amazon also highlighted its focus on AI across the company and its services. It announced the general availability of Amazon Q, the most capable generative AI-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. It delivered a number of innovations in Amazon Bedrock (AWS’s generative AI service that enables customers to leverage an existing large language model, customize it with their own data, and have the easiest and best features available to deploy secure, high quality, low latency, cost-effective production generative AI apps). Tens of thousands of organizations worldwide are using Amazon Bedrock. There was also the extension of AWS and NVIDIA’s strategic collaboration to make AWS the best place to run NVIDIA GPUs, helping customers unlock new generative AI capabilities.