Amazon (AMZN) will report its first quarter earnings on Thursday as investors look for more insights into the impact of tariffs on the e-commerce company in the coming quarters.
For the quarter, Amazon is expected to see earnings per share (EPS) of $1.36 and revenue of $155.1 billion, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. That’s a jump from the EPS of $0.98 and revenue of $143.3 billion the company reported in Q1 last year.
Amazon’s announcement comes after a dustup with the Trump White House on Tuesday over a PunchBowl News report that the company was preparing to include the impact of tariffs on product prices.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the move “a hostile and political act,” and CNN White House reporter Alayna Treene said President Trump personally called Bezos to complain about the plan.
Amazon has since denied it was going to add tariff pricing to its main e-commerce site.
“The team that runs our ultra-low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle said in a statement. “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”
During a Tuesday afternoon briefing, Trump commented on the matter, saying, “Jeff Bezos is very nice. Terrific. He solved the problem very quickly. He did the right thing. Good guy.”
The episode highlights the precarious position tech companies face as they work to navigate the reality of Trump’s tariffs and the threat of possible reprisals from the White House.
With goods imported from China facing a 145% tariff and other countries facing a blanket 10% tariff, UBS analyst Stephen Ju estimates in an investor note that some 50% or more of products sold on Amazon will face some kind of tariff price increase.
“Consumers therefore might have to make more difficult choices on where to allocate their dollars,” Ju wrote.
“We also have to think that there could be second order impacts as exporters to the US are likely going to face lower revenue and as a result may have to make adjustments to their business/headcount needs, which may impact employment globally and downstream [gross merchandise value] growth internationally as well,” added Ju.
Amazon will also have to show in its report that its AI investments are paying off. The company, like rivals Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT), is spending billions of dollars building out AI data centers and related infrastructure to power its generative AI initiatives for enterprises and consumers. But investors are still eagerly awaiting a payoff to all of the investing.
