Rising sales through Internet and cloud services allowed Amazon's profits to reach $33,364 million last year, up more than 56% from 2020, when it reached $21,331 million.

In 2021, Amazon's sales resulted in $469,822 million, up 21.7% from the $386,064 million recorded in 2020.

The Seattle, Washington-based company unveiled its quarterly results on Thursday, where it posted net earnings per share of $65.96, up from $42.64 a year earlier.

Amazon is one of the companies that has profited the most over the two-year covid-19 pandemic, benefiting from the increase in 'online' commerce derived from the restrictions on mobility and the closure or reduced capacity and hours of physical stores for several months.

In 2021, the company led by Andy Jassy increased its sales both in its main market, North America, with an 18% increase to $279,833 million in revenue, and in the rest of the world, where revenues increased 22% to $127,787 million.

On the other hand, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform that offers cloud computing services and is the industry leader, increased revenues by $37% to $62,202 million.

AWS is the company's big bet for the future and its most profitable business, and it has undisputed dominance in the market, well above its biggest rivals, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud.

In addition to these two sectors, Amazon also made large profits from its investment in electric vehicle company Rivian, recording almost 12 billion in the last quarter, coinciding with its stock market trading.

The company also released for the first time detailed data on its advertising business, whereby companies promote their products on the platform, which posted a profit of $9.7 billion between October and December, up 32% year-over-year.

Amazon is known to be the third largest US company in the 'online' advertising market, behind the two big dominators of the sector, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook).

Source: Lusa