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On the Call: Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak on media sales

303 days ago

By The Associated Press

Is the glow from the Kindle Fire fading?

That was a question that faced Amazon.com Inc. Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak on Thursday.

The company said that the tablet, which was launched in November, remained its top-selling item in the April-to-June period. But the device's positive impact on sales of digital books, movies and music appeared to be weaker than in the past. As usual, Amazon was mum on specific sales figures.

Companywide media sales grew 13 percent from a year earlier to $4.1 billion. That's slower than the 19 percent growth experienced in the January-to-March quarter. Internationally, the media sales growth rate slowed to 12 percent from 22 percent in the first three months of the year.

QUESTION: Can you discuss the international media deceleration? It looks like it decelerated from 22 percent to 12 percent.

RESPONSE: (Szkutak) One thing to keep in mind is for both the total business, international growth and international media we had very strong growth last year (in the second quarter). In fact, our total growth rate last year was 51 percent for the total business. And on a local currency basis that was 44 percent growth and that is the highest growth we've had in over 10 years.

And so when you look at that and comparing ourselves in (the second quarter) this year, we had very good growth given that compare to last year. And that is some of what you are seeing also in international media, as you mentioned.

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