Amazon's focus is shifting away from sellers? The latest financial report is lower than expected

Amazon recently released its Q2 financial report for this year, and the rapid growth since the outbreak has slowed down for the first time ! Some institutions even predict that Amazon may shift the focus of its mall business!

In the Q2 financial report released on the afternoon of the 29th, Amazon announced that its revenue in the second quarter of this year reached 113.08 billion US dollars! A year-on-year increase of 27%. The previous forecast agency estimated Amazon's Q2 performance to be 115 billion US dollars. Although the difference is not much, this estimated value is relatively conservative. Amazon still failed to achieve it, indicating that the actual revenue growth rate in the second quarter fell more than expected.

After the financial report was released, Amazon's stock price fell 5%, and the Prime Day, which was originally supposed to stimulate sales in the third quarter, was moved forward to June of the second quarter , and the entire third quarter faced the dilemma of weak sales nodes. Therefore, investment analysts generally believe that Amazon will usher in a more dangerous period of stagflation in the third quarter.

Previously, I had analyzed based on clues that Amazon might arrange another big promotion festival in the third quarter. This information can be combined with today's forecast agency analysis. This mysterious big promotion festival should be set up to solve the problem of weak sales in the third quarter .

In addition to sales issues, this financial report also revealed a problem: Amazon's business focus is gradually shifting.

When releasing its financial report recently, Amazon's new CEO Andy Jassy mentioned that the net sales of Amazon Web Services (AWS) increased by more than 37% year-on-year, far exceeding the growth rate of Amazon's overall business and mall business, becoming the brightest business pillar in the Q2 financial report.

And everyone knows that before becoming the new head of Amazon, Andy had always been the head of AWS business. When we analyzed the reasons why my brother-in-law chose Andy as his successor, we also mentioned that the outstanding performance of AWS business was one of Andy's stepping stones. However, this business has not performed particularly well from 2019 to 2020 due to various reasons (such as the epidemic and Microsoft snatching cloud computing orders from the Department of Defense).

After Andy was announced as the successor at the beginning of the year, he began to gradually take over the overall business of Amazon. This led to the large-scale review and store closure incident since May . After reading the financial report, I found out that Andy did not let go of the old AWS business. Instead, he put more energy into restarting the growth of AWS business , turning the originally slow-growing AWS into a growth point for the entire company !

Amazon's chief financial officer also said that as the quarter progressed, restrictions were gradually lifted in major European and American regions, and the number of people shopping at home has dropped significantly. Taking the US market as an example, although the overall e-commerce market is still growing, the growth rate has begun to slow down. " The new CEO Andy has said that he has already taken action in response to this situation . I look forward to his next move and optimistic attitude."

Andy's strategy is actually very clear. It is definitely to gradually transfer Amazon's dependence on the mall business to other businesses. Although the e-commerce business has a large market and is growing rapidly, it is too hot to handle. Amazon has been punished by antitrust agencies two or three times this year because of its mall business, and has even been hammered by the media and antitrust agencies. It has repeatedly threatened to split the mall business. In this environment, the best countermeasure is to make compliance in the e-commerce business to show goodwill to government agencies, while making plans to shift the focus to other businesses to diversify risks.