It’s not your imagination: Every recycling bin on your block really is filled with Amazon boxes.
The early returns for the online retail giant’s holiday shopping season appear to be — to put it mildly — robust. The company said it experienced a record-breaking holiday season, shipping 200 million more items through its Prime subscription service, which offers free shipping and other benefits.
What we don’t know yet, of course, is how those numbers will translate into profits. Despite its e-commerce dominance, Amazon has never been a profit-generating machine like Google, Apple or Microsoft. In its most recent quarterly financial report, made in October, it had a small, surprising profit — aided in no small part by the rapid growth of the company’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services.
Will that change when Amazon reveals sales figures for the quarter that is just ending? If the numbers the Seattle company has already revealed are any indication, its executives are at least hinting at their confidence.