Amazon.com is proving that it can run grocery stores, churn out gadgets, expand its cloud-computing business and invest in new markets, all while selling more products online and managing expenses.
Net income increased to $256 million from $252 million a year earlier, the Seattle-based company said Thursday. Sales gained 34 percent to $43.7 billion.
"In the last month alone, we've launched five new Alexa-enabled devices, introduced Alexa in India, announced integration with BMW, surpassed 25,000 skills, integrated Alexa with Sonos speakers, taught Alexa to distinguish between two voices, and more. Because Alexa's brain is in the AWS cloud, her new abilities are available to all Echo customers, not just those who buy a new device," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "And it's working - customers have purchased tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices, given Echo devices over 100,000 5-star reviews, and active customers are up more than 5x since the same time last year. With thousands of developers and hardware makers building new Alexa skills and devices, the Alexa experience will continue to get even better."
Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market on August 28, 2017. The two companies together will pursue the vision of making natural and organic food affordable for everyone. Whole Foods generated $21 million of operating income in the period, which included about a month of sales. Revenue from "physical stores," primarily Whole Foods locations, was $1.28 billion.
The company projected operating income in the current quarter of $300 million to $1.65 billion on revenue of $56 billion to $60.5 billion.
Amazon dominates e-commerce in the U.S. with its $99-a-year Amazon Prime subscription, which includes delivery discounts, music and video streaming and is intended to keep shoppers engaged with the website. Amazon's subscription services revenue, which is mostly from Prime memberships, increased 59 percent to $2.4 billion in the third quarter. Second-quarter growth was 53 percent.
Revenue from Amazon Web Services, its profitable cloud-computing division, increased 42 percent to $4.6 billion. Second-quarter growth was 42 percent.