Year-over-year quarterly growth of 44% would be significant for any company, but when the numbers were already this big, it starts to qualify as astonishing.
Amazon's sales of $108.5 billion in the first quarter compared with $75.5 billion a year earlier, setting a new record for the Seattle-based e-commerce giant and providing a glimpse of its strong position as the world emerges from the pandemic. Amazon is easing its spending on COVID-19 initiatives, but consumers' online purchasing habits appear to have permanently changed.
The result: its profits more than tripled, to $8.1 billion, from $2.5 billion a year earlier.
The impact of that structural shift on Amazon's bottom line is the big takeaway from its first-quarter results, released Thursday afternoon.
We break down the quarter on this episode of Day 2, GeekWire's podcast about everything Amazon, with GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook, and former third-party seller Jason Boyce, co-author of "The Amazon Jungle" and founder and CEO of e-commerce agency Avenue7Media.
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.