En esta entrada vamos a profundizar en los puntos que me han parecido más relevantes sobre los resultados de Amazon del 2021 Q2.
Comentarios
Las cuentas trimestrales de Amazon han tenido un gran impacto en cotización debido principalmente a:
1. Por debajo de consenso en ventas aunque por encima en EPS.
2. Guidance para siguientes quarters por debajo de lo esperado.
3. El guidance y resultados por debajo de consenso, no ha tenido un miss tan grande desde hace cinco años.
4. Quedar por debajo de expectativas en ventas refleja lo dificil que es normalizar la situación post-covid, donde las ventas se vieron fuertemente sesgadas al alza.
En mi opinión el miss en ventas es totalmente normal dado el boom que supuso la pandemia en e-commerce. El comparable al que se enfrentaba Amazon era muy complicado y aún así consiguió mantener un crecimiento de doble dígito en e-commerce.
En los resultados del Q1 Amazon decía lo siguiente:
"Net sales are expected to be between $110.0 billion and $116.0 billion, or to grow between 24% and 30% compared with second quarter 2020." Han quedado en 113,1, por lo que quizás los analistas deberían haber hecho más caso al guidance del propio Amazon, dado que las ventas se quedaron justo en el punto medio.
Si consideramos la tasa de crecimiento anual compuesta a dos años, está en el rango del 25% al 30%. Recordemos que esto se compara con una tasa de crecimiento anterior a la pandemia del 21%. Por lo tanto podemos ver aceleración de los niveles de suscripción y compra de los miembros de Prime en los últimos 18 meses.
Respecto a las cuentas, me parecen realmente buenas. Los segmentos de mejor margen aceleran crecimiento: advertising y AWS, mientras que el core de Amazon que es FBA, 3P y 1P crece por encima del 10% contra uno de los comparables más duros de su historia. Esto nos da un crecimiento del 27% en ventas y del 36% en EBITDA, por encima de los crecimientos que había en los trimestres previos al covid.
A nivel segmentos:
1. **North America** +22% yoy, lo cual es un crecimiento fuerte teniendo en cuenta que veníamos de un comparable +43% yoy. Los márgenes operativos del 5% (en el rango alto)
2. **International** +36% yoy, lo cual es un crecimiento muy fuerte y muy por encima del que había los trimestres anteriores al COVID. Los márgenes operativos han sufrido pero mantienen el ebit positivo (1%). En la división International están invirtiendo fuerte para equiparar tanto en tiempos de entrega como en servicios a USA, por lo que es normal que sufran algo más los márgenes.
3. **AWS** +37% yoy, es el crecimiento más fuerte desde marzo de 2019, por lo que buenas noticias. Podía anticiparse un crecimiento fuerte siguiendo el backlog de AWS que comentamos en nuestro análisis. A nivel de margen operativo ha caído hasta el 28% (desde el 31%), algo que se trata en la call y que es normal dado el ritmo de inversión que se está realizando en AWS.
A nivel Revenue:
1. **Online Stores** Es de las divisiones que más se ralentiza, pasando a un crecimiento del 16% contra un comparable durísimo. Hay que tener en cuenta que los crecimientos previos a la pandemia en esta división eran mid teens, por lo que me parece un resultado fuerte.
2. **Physical Stores** Quizás es la mayor sorpresa dado que se enfrentaba a un comparable "fácil" por la pandemia y tan solo rebota un 11%.
3. **Third-party seller services** un crecimiento del 38% yoy es impresionante teniendo en cuenta el comparable del COVID. Este crecimiento es superior al que había antes de la pandemia.
4. **Suscription services** crecimiento del 32% yoy con 50 millones de nuevos usuarios los últimos 18 meses. Hay espacio para crecer, al e-commerce le queda mucho por penetrar y el MOAT de Amazon cada vez es más amplio.
5. **Advertising** Impresionante crecimiento del 87% lo cual deja patente el recorrido que hay en esta división. En nuestro análisis comentábamos que era una de las partes más prometedoras de Amazon y en el Q2 de 2021 no ha hecho más que reafirmar la tesis. Mucho contenido interesante en la call sobre Advertising.
Amazon Pharmacy ha introducido una opción de suministro de seis meses para los medicamentos , ofreciendo a los clientes una nueva forma de comprar muchos de los medicamentos más comúnmente recetados. Para los miembros de Prime, las compras de farmacia incluyen siempre la entrega gratuita e ilimitada en dos días, y algunos medicamentos empiezan a costar solo 1 dólar al mes cuando los clientes pagan sin seguro.
Hay que tener en cuenta que con la llegada de la pandemia ha habido un incremento de costes excepcionales no recurrentes, fruto del COVID. Hablamos de 15b desde el inicio de la pandemia, algo desde luego no despreciable, que en el caso del Q2 han sido 1,5b y se esperan 1b para el Q3. Se está empezando a reducir estos costes extraordinarios lo que ayudará a mejorar márgenes.
A nivel cuentas por lo tanto en mi opinión muy positivas, el management ve claros vientos de cola y se centra en invertir para incrementar su capacidad para 3p y FBA, lo cual demuestra puntos muy positivos de cara al futuro.
Para 3er y 4o trimestre espero un ralentizamiento mayor (15% y 10% yoy) de las ventas, lo cual entra dentro del guión teniendo en cuenta el impulso que supuso el COVID. En el ralentizamiento influye también que el Prime Day ha sido en el Q2 (llevan 3 años cambiándolo de trimestre) por lo que tendrá un comparable más duro sin Prime Day de por medio. De hecho, solo el Prime day ha aportado 400pb al crecimiento del Q2, algo sin duda a tener en cuenta.
Conference call
Sobre el Prime Day
The Prime Day event was the biggest 2-day period ever for these SMBs in our stores, and our 3P revenue continues to grow significantly faster than our online store's revenue. Third-party units represented 56% of our total paid units in Q2, up from a 53% mix 1 year ago.
Our second quarter net sales were $113 billion or at about the midpoint of our guidance range. That's a year-over-year increase of 27%, or 24% **excluding the impact of foreign exchange, and included the shift of Prime Day into Q2 this year, which added about 400 basis points to the year-over-year growth rate**
**Prime Day has also been in 3 different quarters the past 3 years so I will normalize for this impact on my growth rate comments**
Here's a quick recap of our growth rates in 2020 and 2021. First, before COVID-19, we've been growing at a revenue growth rate close to 20%. 2019 full year growth was 22%, and revenue growth for the first 2 months of 2020 was 21%. Once the pandemic hit and lockdowns began in March 2020, the initial growth rate jumped into the mid-30% range.
Since May 15, again, excluding Prime Day, our year-over-year growth rate has dropped into the mid-teens. Our Q3 revenue guidance range of 10% to 16% growth reflects an expected continuation of this trend. Given all this volatility, it's useful to consider the 2-year compounded annual growth rate, which remains strong in the 25% to 30% range. Recall this compares to our pre-pandemic growth rate of 21%. This reflects the acceleration of Prime membership and Prime member purchase levels over the past 18 months.
While I'm not giving forward guidance beyond Q3 of this year, we do expect this pattern of difficult year-on-year revenue comps to continue for the next few quarters. As we move forward and start to comp COVID's impact on our revenue growth, we encourage you to also look at the multiyear compounded annual growth rate since the onset of the pandemic to better put this growth in perspective.
50 million new members in the past 18 months.
Amazon advertising is innovating at a fast clip, launching over 40 new features and self-service capabilities in the quarter, making it easier for sellers, companies and authors to grow their businesses by helping customers discover their brands and products. Other revenue increased 83% year-over-year in Q2, excluding the impact of foreign exchange, driven largely by continued acceleration in our ads business.
AWS customers recognize that the move to the cloud is very positive for their businesses in the medium and long term. **Disruptive economic events like COVID have caused many people to step back** and think about how they want to change strategically, and many have come to the conclusion that they do not want to own and run their own data centers. They see that they can save money and gain agility and innovation by moving to AWS.
I'll finish up with some comments on our ongoing investments in operations. **As we think about the pull forward in demand we've seen these past 18 months, it has required and will continue to require a significant amount of investment in our fulfillment network**. Our teams have done a remarkable job stepping up to serve customers and support our vendors and sellers, and we have worked hard to increase capacity at a rapid rate.
For the trailing 12 months ended Q2, CapEx and equipment finance leases increased 74% versus the prior trailing 12-month period. And as usual, most of our 2021 spend in building openings are planned in the second half of this year. This is all part of a multiyear investment cycle for us. Unit volumes, while obviously growing at lower rates off last year's large comp, continue to remain high, and we see strong demand for FBA and third-party sellers. So there's more work to do, including additional build-outs of our FCs as well as our middle mile and last mile capabilities to support our fast improving delivery offers for customers.
Sobre incremento de costes
would say on the fulfillment side, there are a number of things. First, we're adding a lot of capacity. If you step back, the Amazon-fulfilled unit volume, so that's the units coming out of our fulfillment centers, both retail and FBA, have doubled in the past 2 years. And the AMZL, the delivery arm of our business, has more than doubled in that time period. So you can see there's been very strong multiyear demand here that we are still catching up with from last year.
So if you've been with us a long time, you know the cadence is that as we add demand -- or excuse me, as we add capacity, there's a lot of additional costs, from hiring, to starting up, to training, to getting that building or sort center or delivery station up and running. It usually takes a multiyear period to tame those assets. And we've literally nearly doubled our network here in the last 18 months from a size standpoint. So there's a lot of that going on, a lot of strong effort by our fulfillment and ops teams to help mitigate the cost.
The other thing is wage pressure has become evident. We've talked about this a bit. The wage increase for -- that we normally would do in October, we pulled forward into May. We're spending a lot of money on signing and incentives. And while we have very good staffing levels, it's not without a cost. It's a very competitive labor market out there. And certainly, the biggest contributor to inflationary pressures that we're seeing in the business.
Sobre por qué invierten tan fuerte
On forward investment, here's how I'd explain it. We -- again, we are sitting here with demand volumes that have gone up on an Amazon-fulfilled network basis, they've doubled in a 2-year period. So we are not back to where we want to be on a number of dimensions. We handled Q4 last year. We've been playing catch-up pretty much since the pandemic started. But what suffered is space and space constraints and that's -- it's gotten better but it was a factor last year.
COVID aceleró las cosas
So that's a good sign. And we like the engagement levels and the retention levels that we see with Prime members. So all in all, a very positive story on that front has accelerated the model quite a bit
Sobre la venta de 3p en Amazon
On a units basis, as we give that metric every quarter, about 56% of our overall total paid units are third party. That's up about 300 basis points year-over-year. So expect for us to continue to put forth that effort in FBA around the world for sellers and some of these other SMB features, continue to gain momentum there.
Sobre el ebit positivo en internacional y sobre el camino a seguir en prime marcado por usa
we have had strong international results in the last 5 quarters or so. Noticeably, there have been positive operating income, which had not been the trend prior to Q2 of last year. I would say the major factors here are the acceleration of growth. So we've, in some ways, put the 2 years out-growth on top of today's assets. That's a lot of stress but it's a lot of leverage of the assets that we have.
And as we've talked about before, our fulfillment centers and operations have been running pretty much at peak since May of last year. It's starting to mitigate a bit but it's a strong undercurrent. But having said that, we continue to invest in international expansion. You may have noticed that we added Portugal as a Prime country last quarter. We have investments in Brazil, in India, in the Middle East, in a number of countries. So we continue to add new countries.
We have a strong performance in our more established countries like Europe and Japan. And so it's a bit of a mixed bag. But right now, again, the performance is very strong. The foreign exchange rate has been favorable as well the last few quarters, so that has helped. But really pleased with the performance of our international teams.
And we'll see, again, it -- our investment plans -- our plans are to make money, obviously, in the long run, but we have forward advanced Prime benefits in a lot of these countries before they would have been able to see them if they have run the same trajectory as we did in the U.S. So there's a bit of forward investment on Prime benefits, especially things like Video that we know resonate with customers and are good for the Prime program and turn into, eventually, really strong businesses.
Sobre si la aceleración de AWS es sostenible
On AWS growth, if you look at the run rate last year, we had 33% growth rate in Q1, and it dropped to 29%, 29% to 28% the last 3 quarters. There's always a lot of year-over-year things but -- going on, but we do note that last year, there was a lot of effort by companies to limit their spend and operate more efficiently as we're all plunged into a kind of an unknown demand curve, and some industries were hurt worse than others.
If you'll remember, we worked -- we actually worked very hard with our customers to help them lower their demand for AWS services as best we could to match any new demand patterns. We also helped people scale very quickly. Companies like Disney+, Netflix and others were very glad that AWS was there to help them scale to meet volumes very quickly.
So there's a lot of mixed bag there. We think that it was a strong performance this quarter. We do see good trends with new contracts and new clients that are either signing up with AWS and making the journey to the cloud or accelerating their journey to the cloud or setting up new longer-term contracts with us.
Sobre variación de márgenes en AWS
again, at any point in time, there's a lot of cost pressures in the operating margins of AWS. There's growth, which helps us leverage our assets. There's increasing the efficiency of our servers and the efficiency of our sales force.
Those are all positives.
On the flip side, there's price decreases, there's new contracts signed with large players for multiple years. So there's pricing pressure. There's also the expansion of the sales force and building infrastructure to add new regions globally. So as we said, these margins are going to bounce around. We're happy with the Q2 margins. I would note that there was a negative impact from foreign exchange that was about 150 basis points. But even at 28.3%, it's a strong margin for this business. We know it's going to bounce around as we invest, but also work very hard to scale our businesses and efficiently run our assets.
Sobre Jeff bezos
Jeff, of course, is moving into an Executive Chairman role, and he will not be leaving. He's obviously continuing to be very involved in, as we say, the one-way door decisions.
AWS
Muy buen momentum, nuevos clientes relevantes como:
1. Swisscom
2. BMO
3. Ferrari
AWS plans to open infrastructure Regions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the first half of 2022 and Israel in the first half of 2023. The new Regions will enable even more developers, startups, and enterprises as well as government,education, and nonprofits to run their applications and serve end-users from data centers located in the UAE and Israel. Globally, AWS has 81 Availability Zones across 25 geographic Regions, with plans to launch 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions.
Guidance
• Net sales are expected to be between $106.0 billion and $112.0 billion, or to grow between 10% and 16% compared with third quarter 2020. This guidance anticipates a favorable impact of approximately 70 basis points from foreign exchange rates.
• Operating income is expected to be between $2.5 billion and $6.0 billion, compared with $6.2 billion in third quarter 2020. This guidance assumes approximately $1.0 billion of costs related to COVID-19.
• This guidance assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded.