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Amazon Q2 sales soar 40 percent amid pandemic, profits double

By Huw Hughes

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Business

Amazon smashed earning estimates on Thursday as the company continues to prosper amid the Covid-19 pandemic as shoppers increasingly look online to buy.

The US retail giant’s sales for the second quarter ended 30 June increased 40 percent to 88.9 billion dollars, well above analysts’ estimates of 81.24 billion dollars. The retailer’s net profits for the period doubled to 5.2 billion dollars.

“This was another highly unusual quarter, and I couldn’t be more proud of and grateful to our employees around the globe,” said CEO and founder Jeff Bezos in a statement. “As expected, we spent over 4 billion dollars on incremental Covid-19-related costs in the quarter to help keep employees safe and deliver products to customers in this time of high demand - purchasing personal protective equipment, increasing cleaning of our facilities, following new safety process paths, adding new backup family care benefits, and paying a special thank you bonus of over 500 million dollars to front-line employees and delivery partners.”

Bezos also said the company created over 175,000 new jobs since March and is looking to bring 125,000 of those employees into regular, full-time positions.

He added: “Third-party sales again grew faster this quarter than Amazon’s first-party sales. Lastly, even in this unpredictable time, we injected significant money into the economy this quarter, investing over 9 billion dollars in capital projects, including fulfillment, transportation, and AWS (Amazon Web Services).”

Photo credit: Amazon Facebook

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