Amazon’s Profits Leap 24 Per Cent In First Quarter

While most companies are reporting drops in profits, Amazon's surge by a whopping 24%.

Plenty of companies might be signing the blues as the recession bites them hard, but Amazon is strolling along, whistling and smiling.

Giving its figures for the first quarter of 2009, the Internet retailer showed sales of $4.9 billion, an 18% jump over the same quarter in 2008. The quarterly profits were $177 million, up a staggering 24% ($143 million) on early 2008.

Chief financial officer Thomas J. Szkutak said there had been a slowdown in the last two quarters:

"Starting in Q4, we saw solid growth rates, but certainly not a strong as we saw from the several quarters previous to that and we saw the same thing again in Q1."

"But we’re not doing anything different than we’ve done in the past."