Amazon’s growth contracted in Q1, with revenue up 9 percent compared to 13 percent a year ago. That was good enough to outperform Wall Street forecasts, with overall sales increasing to $155.7 billion, compared with $143.3 billion in Q1 2024. In addition, Amazon Web Services sales grew by nearly 17 percent to $29.3 billion. Yet Amazon share price fell by up to 4.3 percent after hours, a reflection of a Q2 forecast the company says could be affected by newly imposed tariffs. “Obviously, none of us know exactly where tariffs will settle, or when,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts on the Q1 earnings call.

“Judging by the quarter alone, the results furthered the strong performance of a technology company,” writes The Wall Street Journal, noting that Amazon’s financial results came a day after both Microsoft and Meta Platforms “posted positive performances, lifting their shares and boosting markets.”

Amazon predicts what WSJ terms “a solid second quarter” of net sales in the $159 billion to $164 billion range expected to result in profit of $13 billion to $17.5 billion. However, the minimums were lower than what analysts expected, and one analyst told WSJ that despite growing 17 percent, the Q1 performance of AWS was still a “slight miss” against Wall Street forecasts, which was “concerning because the unit is a key profit driver.”

E-retail accounted for just above 59 percent of Amazon’s 2024 revenue, according to Statista. Jassy said on the Q1 earnings call that consumer demand remains unchanged — even increasing in some categories, which “may indicate stocking up in advance of any potential tariff impact.” Operating income for the quarter was $18.4 billion, up 20 percent year-over-year.

However, Bloomberg reports “there are already signs of a slowdown,” as “revenue from third-party seller services increased 6 percent to $36.5 billion in the first quarter, falling short of analysts’ average estimate.”

CNBC notes that up to 70 percent of goods at Amazon.com come from China, “meaning they’re exposed to higher import costs,” though Jassy says some sellers will choose not to raise prices.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg says “advertising, which has been the company’s fastest-growing unit, gained 18 percent to $13.9 billion, in line with estimates.”

Listed among Q1 accomplishments in the earnings news post is the release of Alexa+, a “meaningfully smarter, more capable” digital assistant, launch of the first Project Kuiper low-orbit satellites to provide broadband “to hundreds of millions of households in rural areas currently without it,” and the start of Zoox self-driving technology in Los Angeles, the sixth such location.

On Friday, a day after Amazon released Q1 financials, CNBC reported company founder Jeff Bezos plans to sell 25,000 shares of Amazon stock over the next year , valued at up to $4.8 billion.

Related:
Customer First, Agentic AI Next. Amazon Lays Out Its 2025 Roadmap, PYMNTS, 5/1/25