Amazon suffers shocking $3.8bn quarterly loss

‘The pandemic and subsequent war in Ukraine have brought unusual growth and challenges,’ says CEO Andy Jassy

Amazon suffered a $3.8bn loss in the first quarter of 2022, the retailing giant has revealed.

The unusually poor showing comes after Amazon’s stock in Rivian, an electric auto maker, plummeted by $7.6bn, along with other recent difficulties.

“The pandemic and subsequent war in Ukraine have brought unusual growth and challenges,” the company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said in a statement on Thursday.

Amazon’s revenue increased by just seven per cent in Q1, its lowest rate of growth since the dot-com crash of 2001, according to CNBC. The company expects its revenue in Q2 to range between $116bn and $121bn.

Mr Jassy’s statement, however, mostly focused on the “progress” he said he was seeing.

“Today, as we’re no longer chasing physical or staffing capacity, our teams are squarely focused on improving productivity and cost efficiencies throughout our fulfillment network,” the CEO said.

“This may take some time, particularly as we work through ongoing inflationary and supply chain pressures, but we see encouraging progress on a number of customer experience dimensions.”

One thing Mr Jassy did not mention was the revolt of many of his employees. On 1 April, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York City voted to establish a union, in spite of the company’s multimillion-dollar campaign to talk them out of it. A similar election in Bessemer, Alabama was too close to call.

But experts say the biggest factor in Amazon’s sudden plunge was the misfortunes of Rivian, in which the retailer had heavily invested. In the first three months of 2022, shares of the car manufacturer lost more than half their value as it grappled with supply chain interruptions and production problems.

Just hours after Amazon announced its net loss for the quarter, shares in the company plunged by almost nine per cent.