NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon on Tuesday reported strong results for the first quarter, driven by growth in its cloud-computing unit and new advertising dollars from its Prime Video streaming service.
The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said it brought in $143.31 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, a 13% jump compared to the same period last year. Net income came out to $10.43 billion, or 98 cents per share. That soundly beat Wall Street analysts' expectations for 84 cents a share, according to FactSet.
“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,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.
The nation’s biggest online retailer is coming off better-than-expected results for the holiday shopping period, when it saw strong consumer spending aided by discounts and faster shipping speeds. Amazon held another discount event in late March, right before the end of the first quarter.
Overall, U.S. consumer spending has continued to grow despite higher prices and higher borrowing costs resulting from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. The nation’s economy slowed down during the first three months of this year, but hiring has also remained robust.
Amazon's U.S. customers are being “very thoughtful” about their spending, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said in a call with reporters. He noted consumers are looking for deals and trading down, and that the company is “particularly” seeing lower spending in Europe.
Aside from its core retail business, Amazon said first-quarter sales in its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, amounted to $25.04 billion, up 17% from the same period last year.
AWS, whose customers are mostly businesses, has been the cornerstone of Amazon’s strategy in the competitive artificial intelligence race among big tech companies. The unit saw a slowdown in growth last year as companies cut back on costs amid concerns about the economy. However, Amazon has been using its AI offerings to push back on that trend and attract more enterprises to its cloud business.
Jassy said AI capabilities have reaccelerated AWS' growth rate and it is now on pace for $100 billion in annual revenue.
Hours before Amazon released its earnings report on Tuesday, the company announced a full rollout of a business chatbot called Q that it says can help employees be more productive at work. Last month, it finished its $4 billion investment in San Francisco-based AI startup Anthropic, a competitor to Microsoft-allied OpenAI. Anthropic is collaborating with Amazon to develop so-called foundation models that underpin AI technologies.
Sales in the company's online advertising business also spiked 24%, majority of which is driven by advertising for sponsored products, Olsavsky said.
He said Amazon, which started showing advertisements on Prime Video in late January, currently has a “light” number of ads on the streaming service compared to TV or other streaming providers. Olsavsky said the ads, which customers can avoid with a $2.99 additional monthly fee, are going well and “attracting a number of new advertisers who are not currently using Amazon advertising services.”
Shares in Amazon.com Inc. rose about 2% in after-hours trading.
Under Jassy, Amazon has cut costs in different parts of its business to remain profitable. This year, the company cut hundreds of positions across AWS, Prime Video and MGM Studios. Its subsidiaries, the popular social media platform Twitch and the audiobook service Audible, have also laid off workers.
In addition, Amazon has also been facing regulatory hurdles. In January, the company called off a deal to purchase the robot vacuum maker iRobot after facing regulatory hurdles in Europe. It's also been sued by the Federal Trade Commission over antitrust concerns.
Amazon says it expects to post net sales between $144 billion and $149 billion during the second quarter. Analysts are expecting $150.2 billion, according to FactSet.
FILE - An Amazon Prime truck is seen on Friday, April 5, 2024, in Portland, Ore. Amazon will reports earnings on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
GREENFIELD, Iowa (AP) — Powerful storms that rolled through the Midwest spun up multiple tornadoes, including a fierce twister that smashed through a small Iowa town Tuesday, carving a bleak landscape of destroyed homes and businesses, toppled trees, smashed cars and widely strewn debris and causing an unknown number of injuries.
Iowa State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla said multiple people were injured in Greenfield, a town of about 2,000 around 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) southwest of Des Moines, and there was a lot of damage in town. He didn’t know the extent of the injuries.
In the aftermath of the storm, parts of Greenfield appeared devastated. Mounds of broken wood, branches, car parts and other debris littered lots where homes once stood. Cars lay busted and bent while damaged houses sat skewed against the gray and overcast sky. Trees stood — barely — bereft of branches or leaves.
Multiple tornadoes were reported throughout the state, and one also apparently took down several 250-foot (76 meters) wind turbines. Des Moines, Iowa, television station KCCI-TV showed at least three wind turbines that were toppled by an apparent tornado in southwest Iowa, and at least one was in flames with black smoke pluming from the bent structure.
Wind farms are built to withstand tornadoes, hurricanes and other powerful winds. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, turbines are designed to shut off when winds exceed certain thresholds, typically around 55 mph (88.5 kph). They also lock and feather their blades, and turn into the wind, to minimize the strain.
The Adair County Health System hospital in Greenfield was damaged in the storm, but Mercy One spokesman Todd Mizener said he had no further details. The hospital is affiliated with Mercy One, and officials were on their way to Greenfield to assess the damage.
The town bills itself as “the friendly wave as you walk” type of place with tree-lined streets — before the storm — and “the crack of the fireworks or twinkle of the lights” on special holidays. Also touting itself as the “perfect place to grow,” Greenfield prides itself on being a town where business owners know your name and neighbors help neighbors, according to its visitors page.
Mary Long, the owner of Long’s Market in downtown Greenfield, said she rode out the storm at her business in the community’s historic town square, which largely escaped damage. Long said there appeared to be widespread damage on the east and south sides of town.
“I could hear this roaring, like the proverbial freight train, and then it was just done,” she said.
Camille Blair said the Greenfield Chamber of Commerce office where she works closed around 2 p.m. ahead of the storm. She emerged from her home to describe widespread damage and scattered debris.
“There’s a pretty significant roof damage to several houses that I know will need whole new roofs," she said. "And I can see from my house it kind of went in a straight line down the road.”
In far southwestern Iowa, video posted to social media showed a tornado just northwest of Red Oak. Further east and north, the National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings for areas near the towns of Griswold, Corning, Fontanelle and Guthrie Center, among others.
Iowa was already braced for severe weather after the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center gave most of the state a high chance of seeing severe thunderstorms with the potential for strong tornadoes. Des Moines public schools ended classes two hours early and canceled all evening activities ahead of the storms.
Earlier in the day, residents to the west in Omaha, Nebraska, awoke to weather sirens blaring and widespread power outages as torrential rain, high winds and large hail pummeled the area. The deluge of more than 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) of rain in less than two hours flooded basements and submerged cars. Television station KETV showed firefighters arriving to rescue people from vehicles.
In Illinois, dust storms forced authorities to shut down stretches of two interstates due to low visibility. Winds gusts of between 35 mph (56 kph) and 45 mph (74 kph) hit the McLean area, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Chuck Schaffer.
“There is no visibility at times,” state police posted on the social media platform X.
The storms followed days of extreme weather that have ravaged much of the middle section of the country. Strong winds, large hail and tornadoes swept parts of Oklahoma and Kansas late Sunday, damaging homes and injuring two in Oklahoma.
Another round of storms Monday night raked Colorado and western Nebraska and saw the city of Yuma, Colorado, blanketed in hail the size of baseballs and golf balls, turning streets into rivers of water and ice. Front-end loaders were used to move half-foot deep (1.83 meters deep) hail Tuesday.
Last week, deadly storms hit the Houston area in Texas, killing at least eight people. Those storms Thursday knocked out power to hundreds of thousands for days, leaving those Texans in the dark and without air conditioning during hot and humid weather. The total of deaths was raised Tuesday from seven to include a man who died from carbon monoxide poisoning while running a generator after his power went out. Hurricane-force winds reduced businesses and other structures to debris and shattered glass in downtown skyscrapers.
Tuesday's storms were expected to bring much of the same high winds, heavy rain and large hail to Minnesota and part of northern Missouri, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service.
He said the system is expected to turn south on Wednesday, bringing more severe weather to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri.
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McFetridge reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Josh Funk in Omaha, Colleen Slevin in Denver and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
This image provided by JJ Unger, shows hail damage to the window of vehicle, Monday night, May 20, 2024, in Yuma, Colo. Residents in the small city in northeastern Colorado were cleaning up Tuesday after hail the size of baseballs and golf balls pounded the community, with heavy construction equipment and snow shovels being used to clear hail that had piled up knee-deep the night before. (JJ Unger via AP)
This image taken from video provided by JJ Unger, shows hail damage to a window of vehicle, Monday night, May 20, 2024, in Yuma, Colo. Residents in the small city in northeastern Colorado were cleaning up Tuesday after hail the size of baseballs and golf balls pounded the community, with heavy construction equipment and snow shovels being used to clear hail that had piled up knee-deep the night before. (JJ Unger via AP)
This image provided by JJ Unger, shows hail surrounding a vehicle, Monday night, May 20, 2024, in Yuma, Colo. Residents in the small city in northeastern Colorado were cleaning up Tuesday after hail the size of baseballs and golf balls pounded the community, with heavy construction equipment and snow shovels being used to clear hail that had piled up knee-deep the night before. (JJ Unger via AP)
Workers clean out shattered glass at the Wells Fargo building as clean up from the previous week's storm continues in downtown Houston, Monday, May 20, 2024. The city closed off streets in a six-block exclusion zone downtown, from McKinney to Polk and from Smith to Travis to ease traffic around the area where broken glass and debris are prevalent. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)
A police officer and an employee of nearby Dingman's Collision Center push a car that had been caught in flood waters in Omaha, Neb. on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 (Chris Machian /Omaha World-Herald via AP)
An early-morning storm knock tree branches onto the Pacific Street sign on 42nd Street in Omaha, Neb. on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (Chris Machian /Omaha World-Herald via AP)
Heavy machinery clears debris washed out by flooding from nearby construction sites in Omaha, Neb. on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (Chris Machian /Omaha World-Herald via AP)
Water pours out of a parking lot onto the ground in Omaha, Neb. on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (Chris Machian /Omaha World-Herald via AP)
