{"id":6971,"date":"2019-01-31T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T23:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/amazon-sparks-fears-with-sales-forecast\/"},"modified":"2019-01-31T23:38:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T23:38:11","slug":"amazon-sparks-fears-with-sales-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/amazon-sparks-fears-with-sales-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon sparks fears with sales forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Amazon packages\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/227B\/production\/_102972880_amazonpackages_getty.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Amazon has forecast lower-than-expected sales for the first three months of the year sparking investor fears over slowing growth.<\/p>\n<p>Shares in the online giant fell almost 5% in after-hours trading despite it reporting record sales and profit for the Christmas holiday period.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon expects sales to grow between 10% and 18% in the first quarter, slightly below analyst forecasts.<\/p>\n<p>A hit from currency exchange rates was partly to blame, the firm said.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-44894420\" class=\"story-body__link\">How Jeff Bezos took Amazon to the top<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-45414331\" class=\"story-body__link\">Amazon&#8217;s market value tops $1tn<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the three months to the end of the year, which included the crucial Christmas period, profit rose 63% to $3bn (\u00a32.2bn) while revenue was up 20% to $72.4bn.<\/p>\n<p>While this was better than analysts had expected, it was still the slowest sales growth for the firm since the start of 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The firm&#8217;s widening profits are largely driven by the growth of its high-margin businesses, including its cloud, advertising and third-party seller services.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon&#8217;s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, which provided two thirds of the firm&#8217;s profit last quarter, is one of the services the firm is relying on to help offset slowing revenue growth in its retail arm. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;On the profit front, Amazon&#8217;s results are impressive,&#8221; said Neil Saunders, analyst at research firm GlobalData.<\/p>\n<p>However Mr Saunders said sales growth appeared to have slowed as Amazon matured, raising questions about its future.<\/p>\n<p>He said rivals such as Target and Walmart had invested heavily in their online operations and were fighting back.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our data show that they made solid customer gains, and some of that dinted Amazon&#8217;s growth. In our view, the gap between Amazon and the rest is now narrowing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Amazon will now need to work doubly hard to achieve any future sales gains,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">&#8216;Relentless assault&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, who is also the world&#8217;s richest man, singled out its smart speaker Alexa, saying it was the company&#8217;s best-selling device.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally, and customers purchased millions more devices from the Echo family compared to last year,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Nicholas Hyett, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the figures showed Amazon&#8217;s &#8220;relentless assault on the High Street over Christmas&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said the online retailer was &#8220;tightening its grip&#8221; on its customers with add-on services such as Amazon Prime which offer free delivery and other benefits.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With so many opportunities, the biggest problem facing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is where to focus the attention,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-47081690\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images Amazon has forecast lower-than-expected sales for the first three months of the year sparking investor fears over slowing growth. Shares in the online giant fell almost 5% in after-hours trading despite it reporting record sales and profit for the Christmas holiday period. Amazon expects sales to grow between 10% and 18% &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}