Amazon’s new boss is facing a sales slowdown as the breakneck pace of expansion fuelled by stay-at-home shopping eases.
Andy Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos earlier this month, saw shares fall 7% in after-hours trading as his first set of results as chief executive revealed revenues short of Wall Street expectations.
Second quarter sales at the online retail giant rose 27% compared with a year ago to $113.1bn while profits rose 48% to $7.8bn.
But the sales figure missed analysts’ estimates of around $115bn and growth was down from 44% in the first quarter.
A forecast for the current July-September period pencilled in revenue growth of no more than 16%.
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Amazon also pointed to a profit range which will be lower than the third quarter a year ago.
The company’s finance chief Brian Olsavsky said it faced tough comparisons with 2020 when many consumers were stuck at home and reliant on e-commerce.
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In the US and Europe, people were now out and about “doing other things besides shopping,” he said, adding that he expects the lower pace of sales of growth to continue over the next few quarters.
It comes as new boss Mr Jassy tries to get to grips with a sprawling empire that now encompasses a cloud computing division, store chain network Whole Foods, a new healthcare business, and a film and TV arm that is in the process of buying MGM studios – on top of the core retail operation.
During the pandemic, Amazon ramped up its growth, building the number of members of its Prime subscription service – which offers quicker deliveries as well as video streaming – to more than 200 million and recruiting over 500,000 workers to keep up with surging demand.
In North America, its biggest market, net sales climbed by 43% in the second quarter of last year as lockdowns first took their toll.
A year later, sales were still rising strongly, but by 22% – half the pace.
Nicholas Hyett, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Amazon is increasingly bumping up against the law of large numbers – particularly in US retail.
“When you’re only selling $1,000 of product a year, boosting sales by 40% is easy.
“When your annualised sales reach $400bn, finding an extra $160bn of sales is pretty difficult.”
Amazon results come at the end of a busy period of earnings statements that have revealed contrasting fortunes for America’s tech giants as pandemic restrictions draw to an end.
The likes of Google owner Alphabet and Twitter are enjoying the benefits of reopening as advertisers pay for exposure on their platforms as they seek to cash in on pent-up demand.
But elsewhere, Netflix has seen subscriber growth slow after last year’s record additions.
A 43-year-old man was shot dead by police after calling 911 to report intruders had entered his home in Las Vegas.
Brandon Durham was at home with his 15-year-old daughter when he called the emergency line to report armed intruders were trying to break into his property on 12 November.
Bodycam footage shows Mr Durham struggling with a person over a knife in the moments before he was shot and killed at the scene.
“The loss of life in any type of incident like this is always tragic, and it’s something we take very seriously,” Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren said on Thursday.
The force is investigating the incident.
Mr Durham called 911 to report multiple people were outside shooting at his residence in Las Vegas’ Sunset Park neighbourhood, where he had been staying with his 15-year-old daughter, Sky News’ US partner network NBC reports.
It was one of multiple emergency calls reporting a shooting in the area.
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Mr Durham then said someone had managed to get into his home through the front and back doors of the property and he was locking himself in the bathroom, according to a police statement from 14 November, two days after the incident.
Officers reported to the scene at approximately 12:40am and could hear screaming from inside the residence.
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One of the officers, Alexander Bookman, kicked open the front door and once inside, saw Mr Durham and another individual, later identified as 31-year-old Alejandra Boudreaux, struggling over a knife in a doorway.
Mr Bookman ordered them to drop the knife and about two seconds later, the officer fired the gun and Mr Durham appeared to be struck, the bodycam footage shows.
Both Mr Durham and Mr Boudreaux fell to the ground and the officer fired another five shots. Roughly three seconds are believed to have gone by between the first and last shot, NBC reports.
Attempts were made to save the 43-year-old but he died at the scene.
Ms Boudreaux was taken into custody and is facing charges of home invasion with a deadly weapon; assault with a deadly weapon domestic violence; willful or wanton disregard of safety of persons resulting in death; and child abuse, neglect or endangerment.
A homeless man has been arrested and charged over a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.
The 30-year-old man from Florida, Harun Abdul-Malik Yener, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with attempting to use an explosive device to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce, having unveiled some of his plans to undercover agents, according to the FBI.
They began investigating Yener in February based on a tip that he was holding “bomb-making schematics” in a storage unit.
Bomb-making sketches, many watches with timers, electronic circuit boards and other electronics that could be used for building explosive devices were found, the FBI said.
It also said he told undercover FBI agents that he wanted to detonate the bomb the week before Thanksgiving and that the stock exchange in lower Manhattan would be a popular site to target, and that doing so “will wake people up”.
An agent also allegedly recorded him saying: “I feel like Bin Laden.”
He described how he hoped the bomb would “reboot” the US government, explaining that it would be “like a small nuke went off,” killing everyone inside the building, according to court documents.
The documents also claim he had rewired two-way radios so that they could work as remote triggers for an explosive device and planned to wear a disguise when planting the explosives.
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Yener, who had also searched online for things related to bomb-making since 2017, was sacked from his job at a restaurant in Florida last year after his former supervisor said he threatened to “go Parkland shooter in this place”, the FBI added.
He had his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon and will be detained while he awaits a trial.
Court papers filed on Wednesday expand on an earlier outline for what prosecutors argued would dilute that monopoly.
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Google called the proposals radical at the time, saying they would harm US consumers and businesses and shake American competitiveness in AI.
The company has said it will appeal.
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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and a coalition of states want US District Judge Amit Mehta to end exclusive agreements in which Google pays billions of dollars annually to Apple and other device vendors to be the default search engine on their tablets and smartphones.
Google will have a chance to present its own proposals in December.
A trial on the proposals has been set for April, however President-elect Donald Trump and the DoJ’s next antitrust head could step in.