Amazon Q3 2020 earnings – 1m employees and still hiring

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Amazon Q3 2020 earnings are off the chart in just about every way imaginable. Now employing over a million people, they tripled profits with $96.1bn revenue and net income of to $6.3bn compared to $2.1bn in Q3 2019.

A million people is a hell of a payroll to manage, and this doesn’t even include third party delivery drivers, contractors or seasonal workers. They are creating 100,000 new permanent jobs, 100,000 new seasonal jobs with Amazon Air, logistics, fulfillment centers, sortation centers, and global specialty fulfillment teams in the U.S. and Canada and 17,000 corporate and technology jobs in the US. In the UK there will be 10,000 new permanent jobs bringing the total in the UK to 40,000. There will also be thousands of new permanent jobs in Germany, bringing the total to 16,000.

For the fourth quarter, Amazon are predicting sales between $112.0 billion and $121.0 billion, or to grow between 28% and 38% compared with fourth quarter 2019 with income expected to be between $1.0 billion and $4.5 billion. And this assumes $4.0 billion of costs related to COVID-19, with the Amazon Q3 2020 earnings revealing they have already taken a hit of $7.5bn over the first nine months of the year due to pandemic related costs.

Amazon Q3 2020 earnings shows Amazon Advertising (grouped as ‘Other, Primarily includes sales of advertising services, as well as sales related to other service offerings’) a real money spinner. Sales almost doubled (up 49%) to $5.4bn so if you’re been splurging money on Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands then you’re not alone.

Amazon’s biggest challenge now is managing Q4 sales with logistics costs set to sky rocket and they are begging everyone to shop early. The delayed Prime Day was in October and Early Black Friday sales are already running. The big problem is that, even with their own massive logistic operation, Amazon still rely heavily on third party carriers and they have been running at maximum capacity for the past six months. There simply isn’t any spare capacity in carrier networks and if you leave your Christmas shopping until the very last minute then you may be disappointed this year.

“We’re seeing more customers than ever shopping early for their holiday gifts, which is just one of the signs that this is going to be an unprecedented holiday season. Big thank you to our employees and selling partners around the world who’ve been busy getting ready to deliver for customers this holiday.”
– Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon

Amazon haven’t announced anything, but here at Tamebay we’re predicting that the closer we get to Christmas the more you’ll see delivery dates pushed out and in all likelihood the next day Prime Promise will turn into several days before your purchase turns up on your door step, so shop early!