Amazon doubles its earnings and revenue soars 40 per cent

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have this week been testifying to Congress as their companies report quarterly earnings. Photo / AP

Big Tech companies reported mixed quarterly earnings on Thursday, and the winner by far was Amazon, doubling earnings.

Amazon was a notable exception as stay-at-home orders and pandemic fears helped boost sales from its e-commerce sales - although the money that the company is pouring into its distribution system is at least temporarily depressing its profits. The company has put Covid-19 costs at $2b this quarter.

The company's earnings roughly doubled to $5.2 billion and revenue soared 40 per cent to $88.9 billion. Its share price rose 6 per cent minutes after the news.

The staggering economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic was reflected in reports from Amazon, Facebook, and Google's corporate parent, Alphabet.

Apple, the most valuable company of them all, is set to disclose its numbers for the April-June quarter later today.

The quarterly earnings reports came a day after the Big Four's top executives faced a tough congressional grilling over their market power and alleged monopolistic practices.

A first for Google

Alphabet, Google's holding company, reported its first drop in quarterly revenue compared to the previous year. Although it was only a 2 per cent decline, it was a telling sign of a downturn in the digital ad market while also serving as a reminder that the economy is struggling even more than it did more than a decade ago during the Great Recession.

Google's low point during the GFC came during the second quarter of 2009 when its revenue edged up by just 3 per cent. Alphabet's profit for its most recent quarter plunged 30 per cent to $6.7 billion.

Facebook, which also makes most of its money from digital ads, recorded an 11 per cent increase in revenue from the previous year, the social networking company's slowest growth since going public eight years ago.

Its profit nearly doubled to rougly $6 billion from the same time last year. Part of the big jump stemmed from special charges last year.

- Telegraph Media Group