Amazon.com today announced earnings results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2024. Amazon posted revenue of $158.9 billion, up 11% year-over-year. The US business sales increased 9% year-over-year to $95.5 billion, while the international business sales increased 12% year-over-year to $35.9 billion. But the strongest growth came from the AWS business, which saw a 19% year-over-year increase to $27.5 billion. As we already know from the past few quarters, AWS is now a $100 billion business for Amazon.
While Amazon"s revenue growth is decent, the most impressive numbers were around operating income. The overall operating income increased to $17.4 billion, compared to $11.2 billion in Q3 2023. Even the previously money-losing international segment posted an operating income of $1.3 billion, compared to an operating loss of $0.1 billion in Q3 2023. Finally, the AWS segment posted a record operating income of $10.4 billion, compared to an operating income of $7.0 billion in Q3 2023. Overall, Amazon"s net income increased to $15.3 billion, compared to $9.9 billion in Q3 2023.
The upcoming quarter"s numbers will be even better according to Amazon"s own guidance. Amazon is expecting revenue to be between $181.5 billion and $188.5 billion, or to increase between 7% and 11% compared to Q4 2023. And operating income is expected to be between $16.0 billion and $20.0 billion, compared to $13.2 billion in Q4 2023.
Andy Jassy, Amazon President & CEO, said:
"As we get into the holiday season, we"re excited about what we have in store for customers. We kicked off the holiday season with our biggest-ever Prime Big Deal Days and the launch of an all-new Kindle lineup that is significantly outperforming our expectations; and there"s so much more coming, from tens of millions of deals, to our NFL Black Friday game and Election Day coverage with Brian Williams on Prime Video, to over 100 new cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities that we"ll share at AWS re:Invent the week after Thanksgiving."
During the earnings call, Jassy mentioned that the AWS AI business is a multi-billion-dollar revenue run-rate business that continues to grow at a triple-digit year-over-year percentage. Also, he highlighted that it is growing more than three times faster at this stage of its evolution than AWS itself grew.
With its strong financial performance, strategic investments in AI, and focus on customer experience, Amazon is well-positioned for continued success in the years to come.