There continues to be nothing but positive numbers for Amazon. The e-tailer reported Thursday afternoon that total revenue for the company jumped 46% in the first quarter to $7.13 billion, and net income rose 68% to $299 million. The revenue gain was driven by the electronics and general merchandise segment, home to the Kindle, where sales jumped 72% to $3.5 billion. Revenue in the egm segment includes results from Zappos, e-tailer of shoes and clothes, that Amazon acquired last November. The media segment, home to books and e-books, had a sales increase of 26%, to $3.4 billion. The trend was the same in North America where media sales rose a relatively modest 21%, to $1.6 billion, while egm segment sales soared 72%, to $2.0 billion.
The Kindle continues to be the biggest selling single item for Amazon and the company said the number of e-books in the Kindle store has topped 500,000. Amazon has begun to sell Kindle through Target stores, but executives had no comment on plans for offering the e-reader through other traditional retailers. The company said it will continue to actively market the device. Asked how Amazon planned to cope with its loss of pricing power on e-books with the change to the agency model, executives said it would continue to expand selection.
The company sees growth slowing a little in the second quarter, predicting sales gains to be between 31% and 44%, but that was enough to spook some investors and shares slipped in after hours trading.
