Big Tech Profits Soar - Statista
Net income of selected tech companies in the first quarter of 2021 vs. 2020. Statista / IBT

Amazon was the last of the big five U.S. tech companies to report its earnings for the first three months of 2021 on Thursday. And like the other four GAFAM companies before it, Amazon reported yet another blowout quarter, flying past analyst expectation both in terms of revenue and profit. The e-commerce behemoth saw net sales surge 44 percent to $109 billion in the three months ended March 31, fueled by particularly strong growth of its core e-commerce and advertising businesses.

Even more impressively, Amazon reported its fourth consecutive record profit, seeing its net income jump more than 200 percent to $8.1 billion. This is especially notable as the company’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos had spent more than a decade defending his focus on long-term growth over short-term profits. As it stands, it looks like Amazon has officially arrived in the “long term”.

As the following chart shows, the entire GAFAM group, namely Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, saw profits surge at the beginning of 2021, as “Big Tech” continues to profit from the pandemic’s stimulating effect on online advertising, e-commerce and consumer spending. With Apple, Alphabet and Amazon, three of the five even reported triple-digit profit growth, which is astonishing considering the level of profits these companies raked in last year already.