- Amazon reported a fall in its quarterly operating income.
- The retailing giant cited inflationary costs in fuel, energy and transportation.
- Amazon pointed to progress in the efficiency of its fulfillment network.
Considering some rough signals this week from Shopify, Best Buy and Walmart, the news could've been a lot worse from Amazon's latest quarterly earnings report.
Sure, the company pointed late Thursday to spiraling costs in fuel, energy and transportation as the main culprit in pushing its latest operating income down to $3.3 billion from $7.7 billion.
But Amazon also offered the tonic of making progress on its "controllable costs" — namely, the productivity of its massively built-out fulfillment network.
As a result, Amazon was still able to see second-quarter sales grow nearly 8% to $121.2 billion, beating Wall Street's expectations.
The company's stock was up more than 10% in after-hours trading.
Even more importantly perhaps, Amazon's forecast for third-quarter sales called for growth to $125 billion to $130 billion, safely bracketing analysts' expectations.