North American e-commerce giant Amazon this Thursday announced a loss of $2.7 billion in 2022, compared to a $33 billion profit in the previous year, dragged down by its investment in electric car company Rivian.
The technology has been hit quarter-over-quarter by the sharp fall of the Rivian stock exchange, in which it has a significant stake, and has taken on a $12.7 billion burden, according to a company statement, contributing to its first year of underperformance since 2014 .
Amazon’s big 2019 bet on Rivian has been felt in the Seattle company since early last year, a period when the automaker lost 65% of its capitalization.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s annual net sales increased 09% to 513.983 billion, with higher sales volume in North America – its main source of revenue – an international decline and notable growth in its “cloud” business,” Amazon Web Services (A.W.S.).
AWS which is the market leader grew 29% with revenue of 80.1 billion and also was the only segment with operating profit of 22.9 billion but experts said this Thursday it’s moderate growth because of the rise of competitors.
Other factors that impacted Amazon’s accounts include inflation, which contributed to higher costs and lower demand, and efficiency measures that affected severance payments and write-offs on equipment, real estate, and rent.
However, CEO Andy Jassy was optimistic about the future, saying the company expects first-quarter operating income of up to $4 billion and revenue growth of between 4 and 8 percent.
Amazon announced in early January that it plans to lay off 18,000 employees, 6% of a huge workforce that doubled after the Covid-19 pandemic was declared, when e-commerce and the technology sector in general were “thriving”.
Source: DN
