Amazon's fourth-quarter net profit plummeted 98%! More than 100,000 employees have left

After experiencing wild growth during the epidemic period, Amazon began to feel the backlash of overexpansion.

This Thursday, Amazon released its fourth quarter and full year financial report for fiscal year 2022. The report showed that Amazon's net sales in the fourth quarter were US$149.204 billion, a 9% increase from US$137.412 billion in the same period last year, and a year-on-year increase of 12% excluding the impact of exchange rate changes; net profit was US$278 million, a 98% decrease from US$14.323 billion in the same period last year .

The biggest culprit for Amazon's losses so far this year has been its massive investment in electric car maker Rivian, which saw its value plummet last year, weighing heavily on Amazon's profits.

Amazon has bought a 20 percent stake in Rivian and has begun using the automaker's electric vehicles to deliver packages. Rivian hopes to replicate Tesla's success and held the largest initial public offering in U.S. history.

But last year the automaker made missteps on pricing, missed growth targets and its shares fell 82%.

The slowdown in demand growth after the epidemic, coupled with major investment mistakes, has made Amazon's already ugly financial statements even worse.

In response to this situation, Amazon has been forced to reconsider its warehouse expansion plans, and CEO Andy Jassy made a rare appearance on the quarterly investor conference call, saying that the top priority now is to cut the company's operating costs.

Last month, Amazon announced that it expected to lay off 18,000 employees, about 5% of the company's total workforce. At its peak in late 2021 and early 2022, Amazon employed more than 1.6 million part-time and full-time employees worldwide, and the financial report released on Thursday showed that number has now dropped to 1.5 million.

Still, Amazon continues to invest in new ventures. The company is working to close its $4 billion acquisition of One Medical, a chain of primary care clinics. It has also launched a $5 subscription service for generic prescription drugs for paying Prime members, hoping to attract more people to the program.

Seeing the news of Amazon's huge losses, some sellers seemed to be gloating, "Amazon always tries every way to make money from itself, and then invests the money recklessly and loses it in other places. It really deserves it!"

In fact, Amazon's original intention of actively choosing to change during the market recession is good, but wrong strategic decisions may cause the entire company to sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of losses. This year, the market will continue to pay attention to Amazon's latest developments.

Amazon

staff

Net Profit