Amazon beats earnings expectations, sees market uncertainty ahead

“It’s hard to tell what’s going to happen with tariffs right now,” CEO Andy Jassy said during a call with analysts after the market closed. “It’s hard to tell where they’re going to settle and when they’re going to settle.”

Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) guidance for the second quarter reflects uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s tariff war with China and other nations, Jassy said.

Company officials’ guidance for the second quarter anticipates $159 billion to $164 billion in sales and between $13 billion and $17.5 billion in operating income. Wall Street’s expectations for the quarter called for $161.2 billion in sales and $17.6 billion operating profit.

Amazon’s business is divided into several key segments: North America, International and Amazon Web Services.

Jassy said the company did not see a decline in traffic from shoppers on the e-commerce platform during the first quarter.

“We haven’t seen any attenuation of demand yet,” Jassy said. “To some extent, we’ve seen some heightened buying in certain categories that may indicate stocking up in advance of any potential tariff impact.”

He said sellers who use Amazon’s platform haven’t raised prices on their products significantly yet either.

For its online shopping business, Amazon reported quarterly revenue of $57 billion, up 5% year over year from the same period in 2024.

“We also have not seen the average selling price of retail items appreciably go up yet,” Jassy said. “Some of this reflects some forward buying we did in our first-party selling. Some of that reflects some advanced inbounding our third-party sellers have done. But a fair amount of this is that most sellers just haven’t changed pricing yet. Again, this could change depending on where tariffs settle.”

The company’s North American sales segment increased 8% year over year to $92.9 billion. International segment sales increased 5% year over year to $33.5 billion.

Amazon became the target of the Trump administration’s outrage on Tuesday when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the retailer’s reported plans to display tariff price increases to consumers a “hostile and political act.” 

Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle told Forbes the company only considered adding those tariff items to its site, but it was “never approved and not going to happen.”

Trump reportedly called Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos to voice his displeasure with highlighting any tariff price increases, Forbes reported.