E-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon.com (AMZN +0.76%) reported third-quarter results after the closing bell on Thursday. The company smashed every record in sight, propelled by consumers' embrace of online shopping and services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are some of the most amazing figures I found in Amazon's third-quarter report and earnings call.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Net sales: $96.1 billion
The third quarter is normally a fairly quiet period for Amazon, seasonally speaking. In 2020, top-line sales rose 37% year over year to $96.1 billion. That's the largest revenue number in Amazon's history and far ahead of Wall Street's $92.7 billion consensus estimate.
2. Earnings: up 192%
Amazon's bottom line nearly tripled compared to the year-ago period, landing at $12.37 per diluted share. Your average analyst would have settled for $7.41 per share.
3. Capital expenses: up 190%
The company continued to invest heavily in its shipping and warehouse infrastructure. Amazon spent $9.8 billion on capital expenses in the third quarter, up from $3.4 billion in the year-ago period and $6.6 billion in the second quarter.
4. 350,000 new jobs in four months
Amazon added 250,000 permanent full-time employees in the second quarter and another 100,000 in the first month of the fourth quarter. These are full-time titles with health insurance, access to a 401(k) plan, and a minimum wage of $15 per hour.
5. 1.13 million full-time employees
Amazon's hiring spree is adding up to a massive workforce. This figure doesn't include temporary workers or third-party contractors, which added 200,000 to the payroll during last year's holiday season. Even more temporary workers will be hired for the 2020 holidays. Amazon is one of the largest employers in the world at this point, far ahead of the U.S. Postal Service's headcount of 633,000 or retail rival Target (TGT +1.47%), which has 350,000 employees. Retail giant Walmart (WMT +3.06%) still outweighs Amazon with more than 2.2 million workers worldwide, but the list of bigger employers is growing short.
6. COVID-19 tests a day: 50,000
In-house testing for the novel coronavirus will reach 50,000 tests a day in November. At that rate, the company could test every person in its full-time workforce once every three weeks.
Image source: Getty Images.
7. Fire TV devices: more than 100 million
Amazon customers are streaming billions of content hours per month on this rapidly growing family of Alexa-powered media devices. They have also connected more than 100 million smart home devices to Alexa.
8. 280,000 megawatt-hours of clean power
Amazon launched retail services in Sweden earlier this week, paired with a large wind power farm in the county of Varmland. The company has many wind and solar farms, but this is Amazon's first clean energy project outside U.S. borders. The company aims to match the power consumption of all Echo and Amazon devices with clean energy production, and has committed to a net-zero carbon impact by 2040.
