Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) shares are up almost 8% ahead of Friday's open in New York the e-commerce giant saw third-quarter sales jump by more than a third.
The Seattle-based giant, run by billionaire Jeff Bezos, even managed to turn a profit despite investing heavily yet again as it looks to disrupt and dominate new industries such as food delivery and TV.
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Amazon saw sales grow 34% to US$43.7bn in the three months to September 30, ahead of both its own forecast and that of Wall Street, where analysts had been looking for US$42.1bn.
The revenue-beat helped the firm eke out a small rise in net income - which edged up to US$256mln, or 52 cents a share, from US$252mln a year earlier -despite the period typically being a “lower-income quarter” as Amazon stocks up its warehouse ahead of the key holiday season.
Amazon’s strategy has long been to reinvest the bulk of its profits and it kept to that strategy in the third quarter with expenses jumping 35%.
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As for the recent Whole Foods acquisition, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said that is “going really well”. The supermarket chain contributed US$1.3bn to group revenues in around four weeks of sales.
The company is pretty bullish in its outlook for the final quarter of 2017 as well, expecting sales to grow by between 28% and 30% to US$56bn-US$60.5bn.
Profit margins are likely to remain under pressure though, with Amazon admitting that it will ramp up spending and investment once again.
In pre-market trading Amazon shares were up 7.87% to US$1,049.