Amazon Shares Tumble on Slowing Online Sales Growth

Shares of Amazon fell more than 8 percent on Friday after the online retailer reported slowing online sales growth in the second quarter and said consumers were seeking out cheaper options for purchases.

The commentary from the online shopping behemoth is in line with recent value-conscious consumer behaviour, ahead of retail giant Walmart’s quarterly results later this month.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on a post-earnings call that customers were trading down on price when they could.

The company’s shares were trading at about $169 before the bell. Amazon was set to lose about $157 billion in market value, if the losses hold.

“Consumer spending trends facing retail peers appear to have finally caught up with Amazon’s P&L,” MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Morton said.

Amazon’s online stores sales rose 5 percent in the second quarter to $55.4 billion, compared with growth of 7 percent in the first quarter.

The company’s quarterly profit and cloud computing sales, however, beat analysts’ estimates.

Revenue at Amazon Web Services, its cloud unit, rose a better-than-expected 19 percent to $26.3 billion, days after Microsoft’s cloud division Azure fell short of market estimates and sparked more concerns around Big Tech’s hefty AI spend.

Seattle-based Amazon is playing catch up with rivals Microsoft, which partners with OpenAI, and Google in developing its own so-called large language models that can respond nearly instantly to complicated queries or prompts.

Amazon’s forward price-to-earnings ratio for the next 12 months, a common benchmark for valuing stocks, was 33.92, compared with Alphabet’s 20.46 and Microsoft’s 30.88, according to LSEG data.

By Amanda Cooper, Savyata Mishra and Deborah Sophia; Editing by Alun John and Shounak Dasgupta

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