Online shopping behemoth Amazon recorded profits of US$8.1 billion for the first three months of 2021 – that’s three times what it posted for the same period last year.

This super profit figure was generated from revenues of US$108.5 billion for the period under review, a 44 per cent increase on the corresponding quarter in 2020.

Spurred on by demand in online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon joins three other big American corporate titans posting quarterly revenues in excess of US$100 billion namely: Walmart, Exxon Mobil and Apple.

Amazon’s cloud-computing business increased by 32 per cent while its advertising revenue arm soared by 77 per cent. The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, was expected to report earnings of US$9.54 a share on sales of US$104.51 billion and it comfortably beat that. The stock has gained 47 per cent in the past year as the company prospers from the pandemic.

“I don’t think we normally would have forecasted 50 per cent growth in Q1 and certainly stressing on operations, but my hat’s off to the operations team. They handled the volumes in Q1 very efficiently,” said Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky.

E-commerce has proven to be a big winner for Amazon and it has seen a significant uptick in its international sales which raked in an operating profit of US$1.25 billion in Q1 from sales of US$30.65 billion.

Despite its huge success, Neil Saunders, managing director of Global Data, says Amazon is viewed as a soulless corporate beast, void of inspiration and swagger.

“To us, Whole Foods reveals the Achilles’ heel of Amazon: as great as it is at functional factors such as convenience, operational prowess, technological innovation and so forth, it lacks something of a soul when it comes to creating inspiration and excitement,” Saunders said.

“This especially applies to physical spaces but is also evident in the very functional nature of its website and its difficulty in gaining traction in some sectors like luxury fashion.”

“At one level this doesn’t matter as Amazon’s skills differentiation is elsewhere.

“However, that weakness is one of the big opportunities for other retailers and as a retailer like Target shows, focusing on things that Amazon isn’t so good at is a recipe for considerable success.”