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Recently, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced its first-quarter results that surpassed market expectations. Amid recessionary fears, Amazon has announced a series of layoffs that helped it earn strong profits in the quarter.

Amazon’s Financials

Amazon’s first-quarter revenues grew 9% to $127.4 billion, ahead of the market’s forecast of $124.5 billion. Net income was $0.31 per share compared with the Street’s forecast of $0.21 per share.

During the quarter, Amazon Web Services grew 16% to $21.3 billion, ahead of the $21.22 billion expected by the market. Advertising revenues grew 23% to $9.5 billion and were also ahead of the market’s forecast of $9.1 billion.

Amazon is handling the current slowdown in the economy by looking at its cost structure. It has reduced its headcount by 76,000 employees during the first quarter, ending with 1.46 million employees at the end of the quarter. It recently announced plans to lay off another 27,000 employees. This year, Amazon recorded the largest job cuts in its almost thirty-year-old history.

Amazon expects its second-quarter revenues in the range of $127-$133 billion, compared with market forecast of $129.8 billion.

Amazon’s Generative AI Product Upgrades

Like others in the industry, Amazon is also investing heavily in the AI space. It recently announced new AWS tools that will make it easier for organizations to leverage generative AI capabilities. It released Amazon Bedrock, a managed service that offers customers a simple way to build and scale enterprise-ready generative AI applications by providing them with access to foundation models from AI startups like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, and Stability AI. Users will also have exclusive access to the Titan family of foundation models developed by AWS. Access to these models gives the users the flexibility to customize and scale AI to their specific needs.

Amazon also announced the general availability of Amazon CodeWhisperer, an AI coding tool that improves developer productivity by generating code suggestions in real time. Amazon CodeWhisperer will be available for free for individual developers. It has been built to offer an accurate, fast, and a secure way to generate code for AWS services, including Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and Amazon S3.

Amazon’s Acquisition of One Medical

Meanwhile, it continued to accelerate on its healthcare initiative. Last quarter, it announced the completion of the $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical, a primary care organization that offers both 24/7 virtual care services and in-office visits across the U.S. for preventive and everyday health, chronic care management, pediatric care, and mental health services. The healthcare industry has seen a lot of consolidation in the recent quarters with CVS buying Oak Street Health, Walgreens buying Summit Health through its VillageMD operations. Amazon had announced plans to acquire One Medical last year, but the deal was undergoing FTC investigation.

One Medical had recently reported that it had a portfolio of 836,000 members at the end of the fourth quarter last year. It had generated revenues of $274.2 million last year, on which it had incurred a net loss of $101.1 million. It reported an adjusted earnings of $36.9 million for the year.

Post the acquisition, Amazon will also have access to One Medical’s more than 200 brick-and-mortar stores located across 26 markets. Amazon is planning to attract new customers to the segment by offering One Medical’s membership services to customers at a discounted price of $144 for the first year.

Its stock is trading at $112.18 with a market capitalization of $1.15 trillion. It had touched a 52-week high of $146.57 in August last year. It hit a 52-week low of $81.43 in December last year.

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