🗞 Trumps huge gift for Amazon

For the first time, Amazon made nearly $2 billion in profits in the fourth quarter of 2017. The corporation benefits from the US government's generous cut in corporate taxes.

At the end of the year, Amazon has made a strong jump in sales: In the fourth quarter, revenues rose year-on-year by 38 percent to 60.5 billion dollars (48.4 billion euros), as the Internet retail giant announced. The surplus increased from $749 million to $1.9 billion. Thus, the group cracked the billion mark for the first time.

The strong holiday season and the boom in cloud services helped Amazon to a significant profit. However, a hefty provisional proceeds of approximately $789 million from the US tax reform came into play. The government of Donald Trump has reduced corporate taxes at the federal level from 35 to 21 percent.

But even otherwise, things were better at the end of 2017 than analysts had expected: Amazon Web Services, the commercial cloud division, through which companies can book IT services and storage space on Amazon, continues to thrive. The division posted an increase in sales of 45 percent to $5.1 billion.

Amazon's Prime offerings, which provide customers with faster shipments, access to online video and other benefits, are also on the right track. Subscription revenue grew 49 percent to $3.2 billion in the Christmas quarter.

Amazon's spending increased from $42.5 billion to $58.3 billion, reflecting the various projects in which it invests. According to CFO Brian Olsavsky, however, more money is being spent than before: "There are ongoing cost reductions and productivity-enhancing measures under way," the manager said in a conference call with investors and analysts.

This applies, according to Olsavsky, to many areas, but above all to the warehouse infrastructure. Previously, analysts often accused Amazon boss Jeff Bezos of a lack of cost discipline, as the burden of Bezos' zeal for expansion had pushed the balance permanently into a minus. These times are over, meanwhile positive numbers are standard.

For the language assistant Alexa, which Amazon advertises heavily and wants it to become an integral part of its online shopping platform, no concrete sales figures are provided. However, the CEO said: "Our forecasts for 2017 were very optimistic and we have far exceeded them."

For the full fiscal year, revenue increased 31 percent to $177.9 billion. Bottom line, the profit grew from $2.4 billion to $ 3.0 billion. The numbers were very well received by investors and the share rose by six per cent after-market. In the past twelve months, the price has risen by almost two-thirds.

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