Amazon’s Profit Swells to $1.6 Billion, Lifted by Its Cloud Business
Amazon’s Profit Swells to $1.6 Billion, Lifted by Its Cloud Business Photo Amazon’s revenue for the first quarter jumped 43 percent from a year earlier, rising to $51 billion from $35.7 billion in the same period last year. Credit Scott Olson/Getty Images SEATTLE — Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, long ago figured out how to keep Amazon’s sales figures shooting skyward. Now he is doing the same with profit.
The company, which once seemed to have only a passing interest in turning a profit, said its net income for the first quarter more than doubled. Although Amazon is best known as an internet shopping destination, its cloud computing and advertising businesses were big contributors to the jump in profit.
Mr. Bezos singled out the performance of the company’s cloud computing business — known as Amazon Web Services, or A.W.S. — referring in a statement to a “remarkable acceleration” in growth in the segment for a second consecutive quarter.
Amazon often boasts of its co..