AMAZON REPORTS STRONG 1Q RESULTS DRIVEN BY ITS CLOUD-COMPUTING UNIT AND PRIME VIDEO AD DOLLARS

Amazon reported this week strong results for the first quarter, driven by growth in its cloud computing unit and new advertising dollars from its Prime Video streaming service.

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The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said it brought in $143.31 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, a 13% jump compared to the same period last year. Net income came out to $10.43 billion, or 98 cents per share. That soundly beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations for 84 cents a share, according to FactSet.

“It was a good start to the year across the business, and you can see that in both our customer experience improvements and financial results,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.

The nation’s biggest online retailer is coming off better-than-expected results for the holiday shopping period, when it saw strong consumer spending aided by discounts and faster shipping speeds. Amazon held another discount event in late March, right before the end of the first quarter.

Overall, U.S. consumer spending has continued to grow despite higher prices and higher borrowing costs resulting from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. The nation’s economy slowed down during the first three months of this year, but hiring has also remained robust.