Once again, the « heat map » breaks down after Q2 2021, requiring manual intervention. The cells marked in yellow with the red text are excluded from the « heat map » formulation. The trend analysis here yields some interesting facets nonetheless:
- In terms of growth, the AWS segment has the only one that has shown positive growth all the way until Q2 of this year.
- The « e-commerce + content » segments have been a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Incomes for the « International » segment was negative in Q1 2020 (as well as Q4 2019) but there was a long period of positive incomes for both North America and International segments since then till Q3 2021, where the International segment fell into the negative once again. Since Q4 2021, both segments have been negative, with the International segment leading in losses in two of three quarters (the « North America » segment led in Q1 2022).
The negative trends since Q4 2021 is the reason why manual intervention was required: for the International segment, Q4 2021 was a larger loss than the previous quarter but the « heat map » would paint it in a positive colour. Similarly, Q1 2022 was a larger loss for the « North America » segment than the previous quarter and the « heat map » would have shown this as a positive.
While Q2 of this year has the « North America » segment showing a lower loss and the « International » segment a higher loss than in the previous quarter, the fact remains that losses have continued.
Macroeconomic Factors and Price Ratio Trends
When it comes to business of e-commerce, there are at least some intuitive commonalities with the likes of Meta Platforms (which was covered last week) and Alphabet: if the general public lowers consumption, this has an impact on the bottom lines of a company operating in this space, no matter how well-managed it is.
For instance, in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Monthly Retail Trade Report, the « Monthly » indicator shows a slight stabilization of sorts – with even a slight uptick – in the first two months of Q3.
