Amazon International sales fall but CEO Andy Jassy says it’s on ‘right trajectory’

Andy Jassy, president and CEO, Amazon, said that emerging markets like India, Brazil, UAE, Australia, among others, are on the right trajectory ad they follow the path of more mature geographies in terms of sales growth. Jassy, said during the company’s earnings calls that it is sees the investments made online these markets will take time to pay off, but will eventually become large, profitable businesses.

“They’re all on the right trajectory and following trajectories that roughly look like what we saw in North America and our established international geographies, and we think it’s the right investment and believe we’re going to have a large profitable international e-commerce business,” he said during the Seattle-based company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

Amazon’s international sales fell 8% year-on-year to $34 billion whereas losses from its international business, which includes all the marketplaces outside of North America, expanded 36% to $2.2 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2022.

Jassy’s comments about India and other markets come after the company fired about 18,000 employees all over the world, including in India where about 1,000 staff were laid off.

Amazon has shut multiple businesses in India over the last few months, including its edtech vertical Amazon Academy, wholesale distribution division, and its food delivery unit.

Amazon India country manager Manish Tiwary told ET in an interaction in December that the company is not “shutting down businesses”, but merely reassessing some of its experiments in India. Tiwary added that the technology giant would double down on its investments in its business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, pharmacy, grocery and social commerce this year.

Jassy said there has been an impact in Europe because of inflation fuelled by the war between Russia and Ukraine. “If you just look at Europe as an example, the inflation is higher than most places, and the impact on Europeans for the war in Ukraine is more significant, and also the energy prices and hikes there are more significant. So you can see that in some of our growth numbers,” he added.

Amazon operates in about 18 international markets, which includes countries like Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Singapore among others.