Amazon Beats Revenue and Reaffirms Guidance, Great to Have a Cloud Division

Here are a few things I noticed:

* Net sales improved 10% y/y to $121B, if you exclude foreign exchange. 7% if you do.

(Shopify GMV was up 11% y/y in case you were wondering)

* Net loss $2B in Q2, primarily due to $3.9B Rivian pre-tax valuation loss. Would have been massively profitable this Q if not for Rivian. That is why everyone is so excited about Amazon. That plus, they are still growing, to the winner go the spoils. Clear customers do not view their Amazon purchases as discretionary. As a result, analysts cheering.

* 3P Marketplace Sellers units at 57% highest ever.

- Asked about how they are trying to improve 3P mix?

- Answered that "we don't try to improve it. we don't care if 1P or 3P wins, it's just happening"

* They made sure people understand this point, they reiterated

-- 3P is for selection

-- 1P is for price-competitiveness

-- Prime is for convenience

Put them together you have a flywheel folks.

Get it out of your head that 3P is to make Amazon price-competitive.

3P is about wide selection, and availability of uneven inventory in categories with supply that is not concentrated (i.e. 50% of toy category is 3P last I checked).

* Strong advertising growth, 22% up y/y. highly efficient, amzn customers have their CC out ready to make a purchase, and its very measurable. (Contrast Pinterest in the opposite situation)

* AWS is on fire, no matter how you look at it. I'd go so far as to say, without AWS Amazon would be an entirely different company today.

Up 33% Y/Y.

$79B annual run rate in sales now

$5.7B operating income in Q2

* Making Q/Q delivery speed improvements and in-stock at an all-time high. (this matches my personal experience - NYC Amazon delivery is completely on fire right now with turnaround times)

* Slowed logistics expansion plans for 2022-2023, but still investing.

Capital investments:

2021 $60B

40% tech (AWS/eCom tech), 30% fulfillment capacity, 25% transportation, 5% corporate space + physical stores

2022 "slightly more than 2021"

50% tech infrastructure, fulfillment + transportation down y/y

* Buy With Prime:

- invite-only now. FBA only. will expand throughout the year.

"we have a history of empowering and helping merchants"

<cough, cough> I had to laugh at this comment, sorry.

* It's clear Amazon cares less about these calls. It makes me laugh how little production they put into the only 4 PowerPoint presentations they give all year (each quarterly earnings call).