Amazon's revenue surges by 43 per cent pushing shares to record high

Earnings per share come in at $3.27 (£2.35), outpacing analysts’ estimates

The logo of Amazon is pictured inside the company's office in Bengaluru, India

Amazon’s profits surged past Wall Street predictions for the first quarter of 2018, pushing company shares to an all-time high.

The company’s revenue grew 43 per cent year over year to $51bn (£36.6bn), a figure that includes its earnings from acquiring upscale grocery chain Whole Foods and exceeded projections. Earnings per share came in at $3.27 (£2.35), outpacing analysts’ estimates of roughly $1.26 (£0.9).

The company's cloud-computing unit Amazon Web Services also posted strong gains, registering a 49 per cent in sales over the previous year and generating some $1.4 bn (£1bn) in operating income.

CEO Jeff Bezos said the numbers vindicated a longstanding focus on the service.

“AWS had the unusual advantage of a seven-year head start before facing like-minded competition, and the team has never slowed down”, Mr Bezos said in a statement. “As a result, the AWS services are by far the most evolved and most functionality-rich”.

Shares soared by 7 per cent in after-hours, briefly climbing to over $1,600 (£1,150) per share.

The strong showing underscored Amazon’s dominant market position amid a sustained assault from the president of the United States.

Donald Trump has attacked the company by name on Twitter more than a dozen times since entering the White House, asserting without citing any evidence, that the company has not paid enough money to the US Postal Service.

The president’s most recent complaints came in late March and early April, a stretch that partially overlaps the last few days of the period covered in the earnings report.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which regularly publishes stories on the inner workings of the Trump administration and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference.

Mr Trump also regularly dismissed the paper as “fake news”.

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