Financial Services Association, May 1 (Editor: Niu Zhanlin) After the US stock market on Tuesday, US tech giant Amazon released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024. Driven by the growth of advertising and cloud computing business, its revenue and profit for the first quarter were better than expected. This drove its stock price to rise more than 6% after the market, but recently it has narrowed to 1.5%.

Specifically, Amazon's revenue for the first quarter was US$143.31 billion, with market expectations of US$142.47 billion, or US$127.36 billion for the same period last year; net profit for the first quarter was US$10.431 billion, far exceeding market expectations of US$8.686 billion.

Amazon said the company had a positive start in business development at the beginning of the year, and this can be seen from improved customer experience and financial results.

However, in terms of performance guidance, Amazon expects second-quarter revenue of 144-149 billion US dollars, which is lower than market expectations of 15.21 billion US dollars.

By business, driven by discounts and faster delivery, core e-commerce sales in the first quarter increased 7% from $51.1 billion to $54.67 billion; cloud business AWS revenue increased nearly 17% from US$21.4 billion in the same period last year to US$25 billion, exceeding expectations of US$24.1 billion; AWS brought in operating profit of US$9.4 billion in the first quarter, far exceeding expectations of US$7.5 billion.

Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said during the conference call: “We are seeing strong demand signals from AWS customers. They are signing longer, larger agreements, many of which include components for generative artificial intelligence.”

He added that generative artificial intelligence is currently a “multi-billion dollar revenue business” for Amazon, and capital expenditure will “increase meaningfully” in 2024, mainly to support the growth of AWS, including generative artificial intelligence.

Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassi issued a statement saying that many companies' investments in infrastructure upgrades, combined with the appeal of AWS's artificial intelligence features, are once again accelerating the growth rate of AWS, and the annual revenue of this business is expected to reach the 100 billion US dollar mark at the current rate.

Amazon's revenue growth is partly due to extensive cost cuts, adjustments to the delivery business, and stabilizing cloud computing spending. Jia Xi has become more self-disciplined in the company's expenses, while also adding profitable services such as advertising, cloud computing, Prime membership services, and third-party marketplaces.

Meanwhile, Jia Xi supports large investments in artificial intelligence services, which are expected to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue over the next few years.

Since the end of 2022, the company has laid off more than 27,000 employees, and the layoffs will continue until 2024. In the first quarter of this year, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees in the healthcare and AWS divisions.

Ad revenue increased 24% from US$9.5 billion in the same period last year to US$11.8 billion, slightly higher than market expectations. Beginning at the end of January, Amazon began airing ads on its Prime Video service, a move aimed at opening up a new revenue stream for it. Analysts predict that the move could result in significant profits over time.