TODO LO QUE DEBE SABER DE AMAZON Y QUIZÁ NO LE HAN CONTADO

Amazon está superando las expectativas que se tenían sobre ella en los mercados.

El miércoles en el SHOP celebrado en el IFEMA en Madrid, argumenté mis pronósticos a la audiencia:

1. Amazon superará en ventas a Walmart en 2024 en USA . Recordemos que hoy les separan casi 300 mil millones en facturación
2. Amazon superará la barrera de los 500 mil millones de venta en 2025 en USA, cosa que jamás ha hecho ninguna empresa en ningún mercado del mundo.
3. Amazon será uno de los retailers del mundo que más tiendas físicas (en número de puertas) tendrá en un horizonte de 5 años
4. Los sistemas de membresías serán una de las fórmulas con más éxito en el retail futuro, y concretamente Prime Member.  El mejor programa de membresía en la última década ha sido el de Costco, quienes actualmente tienen unos 90 millones de afiliados en el mundo. Amazon tiene algo más de 100 millones. Y el índice de retención de ambos programas están en torno al 90%. Mis estimaciones son que Amazon supere los 160  millones de prime members en 2021.
5. Amazon dominará mundialmente (y en algún caso con mucha distancia de sus competidores) durante mucho tiempo los siguientes sectores: moda, electrónica, juguetes, mobiliario y accesorios para el hogar.
6. Amazon iba a empezar a tener beneficios importantes a partir de este año . Mi pronóstico es que partir de tres años años, empezará a superar el margen neto del 6%. Recordemos que Walmart este año está bajando del 2% en margen neto).

 

 

Les voy a dar otro dato que no aparece en los artículos y análisis a estas horas:

Pronóstico 2Q 2018

Se espera que las ventas netas estén entre $ 51.0 mil millones y $ 54.0 mil millones, o que crezcan entre 34% y 42% en comparación con el segundo trimestre de 2017.  Les anticipo: a mitad de año habrán superado los 100 mil millones de dólares de venta, y superará a final de año ampliamente los 200.000  millones de dólares. Estará alrededor de los 230.000 millones de dólares  .  Pronóstico que yo argumenté que ocurriría en 2018 en este blog a principios de 2017. Superar los 200 mil dólares es algo que  solo ha hecho un retailer en la historia: Walmart. Los cuales superaron esa barrera en 2001, y han estado 21 años superándola exponencialmente. Amazon se unirá al club (hasta ahora  reservado el derecho de admisión a un solo socio)   de los retailers >200K millones dólares.

 

Lo que podemos ver es que el comienzo del año ha sido extraordinario en términos de volúmenes de venta. Superando un 43% las ventas del mismo período de tiempo en 2017. Y tengan en cuenta que las grandes ventas vendrán en el 4Q, donde se junta el Prime day con las ventas de navidades.

Pero si analizamos  el  trailing twelve months (TTM), veremos que en los últimos 12 de operaciones ya rozan a los 200.000 millones de dólares, superando en un 36% el TTM del 1Q2017.

Y atención al TTM de Internacional donde están cerca de los 60 mil millones de dólares (Amazon Internacional por si sola, estaría entre los 18 retailers más grandes del mundo, facturando casi el triple que Mercadona), Y recordemos que casi todas estas ventas se han generado en tres países: Alemania, Japón y Reino Unido. Y con una contribución menor en Italia, España, Francia, México y Canadá. Mi pronóstico es que cerrará 2018 en unos 750000 millones de euros, por lo que por si sola Amazon internacional podría estar entre los 10 retailers que más facturan del mundo.

Ésa es la parte bonita de la historia, la fea: es precisamente en Internacional lo que penaliza los resultados de Amazon. Es donde pierde dinero, debido a las inversiones que están haciendo, sobre todo en logística. Pero de eso se trata la estrategia Flywheel: invertir a largo plazo. Y desde luego están creando un ecosistema (sobre todo en Europa) para dominar el mercado de muchos países de forma aplastante en la década de los 20.

Y mucha atención a los próximos meses a India. Como hace tiempo les indico:  el gran objetivo de Amazon, aparte de Estados Unidos, será India, una vez perdida China.

En el caso de AWS, la joya de la corona, la evolución de las ventas son extraordinarias. Y sobre todo el margen que les deja.

DATOS QUE USTED DEBERÍA SABER.

Vayamos más lejos. Seamos más ambiciosos. Pongamos la lupa en una serie de datos que son claves, y que seguramente pasarán desapercibidos en los titulares.

1. AMAZON FÍSICO. Como argumenté en mi conferencia, los aún mal llamados “pure players mundiales” (por muchos medios especializados en la distribución) ,serán los retailers que más  tiendas físicas (por número de puertas) tendrán en el retail próximo. Hablo de Amazon, Jd. com, Alibaba…  Precisamente  ahora que nos aseguran que las tiendas físicas tienen los días contados con el auge de estos nuevos actores que representan el nuevo retail. Amazon Físico , con la incorporación de Whole Food (y las aportaciones de sus otros formatos), ya supone más del 8% total de las ventas que genera Amazon

 

 

 

Observemos los números desde más cerca.

1. atención al incremento en gasto  Fulfillment (Piensen en Amazon Internacional)
2. Tecnología y contenidos. Recuerden que Amazon es la empresa del mundo que más gasta en I+D

 

TRANSCRIPCIÓN TOTAL DE LA EARNING CALL

“Earning call” es una conferencia telefónica  entre una empresa pública, analistas, inversores y medios de comunicación para analizar los resultados financieros de la empresa. Les dejo algo que les  aconsejo leer, ya que es de gran valor para entender estos resultados.

Les hago un resumen en español de algunos datos que se han dado en esta Earning call y que por lo que he visto han pasado desapercibidos para muchos medios y revistas especializadas:

1- La publicidad va  a ser una fuente muy importante de ingresos para Amazon

2- El programa . Ahora está disponible en más de 100 millones de artículos en entregas de 2 días , frente a los 20 millones en 2014.

3- A partir del 11 de mayo, van a aumentar el precio de nuestro plan anual de EE. UU. De $ 99 a $ 119 para nuevos miembros. El nuevo precio se aplicará a las renovaciones que comiencen el 16 de julio. Y reconoce Amazon que ahí, entre otros,  un motivo de costes logístico : ” cuando aumentamos por última vez el precio de Prime si obtienes 20 millones de productos en dos días, hoy obtienes más de 100 millones de productos en dos días y muchos, muchos productos en un día, el mismo día o dos horas”

4-  Muy interensate la pregunta que le hace el representante del Banco de América-Merrill Lynch:  ¿Y puede hablar sobre alguna iniciativa que haya tenido para construir su propia red de envío? Sé que en algunos países, podrías tener más del 50% de las cosas que estás entregando. ¿Podría hablar un poco sobre la dependencia allí? Y responde Amazon: “Amazon Logistics ha superado el 50% en algunos países, especialmente en el Reino Unido. Ayuda de nuevo con Prime Now y AmazonFresh y hay muchas iniciativas que veremos, que una vez más mencionamos que Prime Now está vinculado con Whole Foods, ahora en 10 ciudades. Entonces, creemos que es una competencia central que tenemos y que debemos tener, y continuaremos invirtiendo en eso”…… 

 

Executives

Dave Fildes – Amazon.com, Inc.

Brian T. Olsavsky – Amazon.com, Inc.

Analysts

Eric J. Sheridan – UBS Securities LLC

Brian Nowak – Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC

Heath Terry – Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

Mark A. May – Citi Investment Research

Douglas T. Anmuth – JPMorgan Securities LLC

Mark Mahaney – RBC Capital Markets LLC

Steve D. Ju – Credit Suisse Securities (NYSE) LLC

Justin Post – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

Gregory Scott Melich – MoffettNathanson LLC

John Blackledge – Cowen & Co. LLC

Operator

Thank you for standing by. Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Amazon.com Q1 2018 Financial Results Teleconference. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Today’s call is being recorded.

For opening remarks, I’ll be turning the call over to the Director of Investor Relations, Dave Fildes. Please go ahead.

Dave Fildes – Amazon.com, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to our Q1 2018 financial results conference call. Joining us today to answer your questions is Brian Olsavsky, our CFO. As you listen to today’s conference call, we encourage you to have our press release in front of you, which includes our financial results as well as metrics and commentary on the quarter. Please note, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results for the comparable period of 2017.

Our comments and responses to your questions reflect management’s views as of today, April 26, 2018 only, and will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in today’s press release and our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

During this call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. In our press release, slides accompanying this webcast and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted on our IR website, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures with comparable GAAP measures.

Our guidance incorporates the order trends that we’ve seen to date and what we believe today to be appropriate assumptions. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and customer spending, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet, online commerce and cloud services and the various factors detailed in our filings with the SEC.

Our guidance also assumes, among other things, that we don’t conclude any additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings or legal settlements. It’s not possible to accurately predict the demand for our goods and services, and therefore, our actual results could differ materially from our guidance.

With that, we’ll move to Q&A. Operator, please remind our listeners how to initiate a question.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

At this time, we will now open up the call for questions. Our first question comes from line of Eric Sheridan with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Eric J. Sheridan – UBS Securities LLC

Thanks so much for taking the question. I wanted to ask if you had any update on the state of the advertising business, sort of the state of conversations with advertisers, what product uptake you’re seeing out in the marketplace, and sort of how that’s looking now as we move out of 2017 and into 2018 broadly for the platform? Thanks so much.

Brian T. Olsavsky – Amazon.com, Inc.

Yes, sure, Eric. I would say advertising continues to be a bright spot both from a product standpoint and also financially. It continued to be a strong contributor to profitability in Q1. It’s now a multibillion-dollar program. You can see the – in our supplemental revenue disclosure, it’s in other revenue, and it’s the majority of the other revenue in that line item.

So our philosophy there again is we’re continuing to focus on finding valuable ways to make our advertising opportunities better for customers, showing them new products that they may not have seen otherwise and also for emerging and established brands, helping them to reach customers. I think the advertisers generally are in all shapes and sizes, and their common theme is that they want to reach our customers generally to drive brand awareness, discovery and eventually purchase.

Before I go into the second question, I want to make a comment about the Prime program. Prime program continues to drive great strength in our top line, as you’ve seen over the last few years actually. We continue to increase the value of Prime, including speed selection and digital entertainment options. We’ve been expanding FREE Same-Day Shipping and One-Day options. And our Two-Day shipping, it’s now available on over 100 million items, up from 20 million as recently as 2014. And we continue to add digital benefits like Prime Video.

The value of Prime to customers has never been greater. And the cost is also high, as we pointed out especially with shipping options and digital benefits, we continue to see rises in costs. So effective May 11th, we’re going to increase the price of our U.S. annual plan from $99 to $119 for new members. The new price will apply to renewals starting on June 16th.

Prime provides a unique combination of benefits, and we continue to invest in making this Prime program even more valuable for our members. As a reminder, we haven’t increased the U.S. annual price of Prime since our single increase, which was in March of 2014.

Dave Fildes – Amazon.com, Inc.

Yeah. And Eric, sorry to just go back to your initial question, to just hop back on that, just want to remind folks that we’ve mentioned this last quarter on the call, but on January 1st, we adopted an accounting standard update that amended our revenue recognition policies. So, the net impact to revenue in the first quarter was not material, but I do want to highlight a few areas. As part of the adoption beginning in Q1, certain advertising services were classified as revenue rather than a reduction of costs to sales. So the impact of this change was an increase of $560 million to other revenue in Q1, which is the other revenue was, of course, part of our supplemental sales disclosure.

So you’ll see that other revenue, in total, increased 132% ex-FX year-over-year to about $2 billion in the first quarter, again, $560 million is included in there, and the majority of that is – would be included in the North America segment.

As you look at the other supplemental line item, just a few items of note. The line item online stores revenue increased about 13%, ex-FX. Beginning in the first quarter, sales of apps, in-app content, certain digital media content are now presented on a net revenue basis and included in third-party seller services revenue rather than net online stores revenue. So in the first quarter, online stores revenue would have been higher, but for this new standard.

And then the line item, subscription services revenue that increased about 56% ex-FX year-over-year. Prime memberships are included in that line. Again, beginning in the first quarter, we now recognize annual Prime membership revenue straight line over the 12-month period. Prior to 2018, we recognize this revenue over the 12-month period with more revenue allocated to the fourth quarter each year. So, in Q1 of this year, subscription services revenue would have been lower, but for this new standard.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Novak with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Nowak – Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC

Thanks for taking my questions. So the first one on Prime, let me ask you this. As you think about your U.S. Prime penetration, there’s some data that shows you’re doing a very good job at capturing a lot of the middle to higher income households and now you’re raising price. Talk about the tension point you need to solve to sort of reach some of the lower income households and even households that are not yet Prime. What are the main reasons why people in the U.S. are not signing on for Prime at this point?

And the second one on early learnings from the integration of Prime Now and Whole Foods, recognizing it’s only in a few cities, what can you share about what you’re seeing about purchase behavior, early learnings? And what are the main signposts you’re watching as you determine how quickly to roll that out to more cities in the U.S. and hopefully, New York soon?

Brian T. Olsavsky – Amazon.com, Inc.

Sure. On your first question about Prime penetration, without getting into any statistics on penetration and by country, I would say we do have other options for, if you’ll notice, there’s the monthly option, obviously provides more flexibility for people who want to try out Prime before committing to the annual plan. There’s discounted student plans. There’s also discounts for other groups. So, we do feel it’s still the best deal in retail, and we just work to make it better and better each day.

The second thing you mentioned is a good example. So, the ability in 10 cities to get Prime Now deliveries of Whole Foods groceries is an added benefit for people in that market using Prime – those markets using Prime Now. So as far as the Whole Foods, specifically on the question of what we’ll look at as far as expanding that grocery delivery, we’re going to use the 10 cities as a test and see how customers respond, just like we always do, and make sure that our deliveries are great for those people, and then we’ll announce expansion plans once we digest that, the feedback we get from customers.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Heath Terry with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Heath Terry – Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

Great. Thank you. I was just wondering if you could give us a sense, the accelerating growth that we saw in the U.S. business in Q1, how much of that or how would you sort of segment that in terms of specific categories? Are there any specific categories that you would call out in terms of driving that?

And then, as we look at the like acceleration in the AWS business, any sense that you can give us in terms of what volumes or customer, you specifically call out sort of customer additions in some of your comments, what customer additions have looked like in terms of driving that business, particularly against sort of the comp against last year’s price cuts?

Brian T. Olsavsky – Amazon.com, Inc.

Sure. So first, with the – you’ve mentioned North America revenue growth, and you can calculate that with and without the impact of Whole Foods, I’m sure. But the general drivers continues to be Prime and the Prime flywheel. So we see strong customer demand, not only for the benefits that we associate with Prime, we’re seeing better engagement with Prime benefits, especially digital (11:39) benefits, and that is always good news for eventual sales of other things.

We’re also selling more subscriptions, Amazon Music Unlimited, multiple Kindle Unlimited, there’s a number of services. So there’s different revenue streams that we see. So, not much more I can add by product line to North America. And I talk about AWS revenue, again, we’re – we are accelerating. We’ve accelerated for the last two quarters. The FX-neutral growth was 48% in Q1, up from 44% on the same basis in Q4 and 42% in Q3. And now nearly a $22 billion run rate.

So what we’re saying is just continued strong usage both by existing customers and signing new customers for – see increased pace of enterprise migrations as customers are having success with AWS and increasingly trying new services. We are seeing people move more and more of their workflows to AWS and at a faster pace. And customers are moving databases to AWS as their work (12:45) continues to grow at a very rapid clip.

So stepping back, I would say, what is driving the growth, we believe, again, it’s the value that we create for AWS customers. We have the functionality and pace of innovation that others don’t. We have partner and ecosystems that others don’t. And we have proven operational capability and security expertise that’s highly valued to the AWS customer base.