📦 The Order : Weekly Roundup - Society Brands, Globalbees & Amazon Q3 boost

Issue #134

Happy Sunday,

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news :

Chart of the Week 📊

Here’s a quick summary of Amazon Q3 FY23:

• Revenue +13% Y/Y to $143.1B ($1.5B beat) — Q4 FY23 Guidance: Revenue ~$160-$167B.
• Operating margin 8% (+6pp Y/Y).
• EPS $0.94 ($0.35 beat).
• FCF $21.4B TTM

Both the third party seller services side along with ads reported strong growth:

—> Detailed Q3 results reporting (Amazon).

Amazon unBoxes Highlights 🤹

Amazon’s highlight announcement for this year’s unBoxed event was around AI-generated images: Amazon rolls out AI-powered image generation to help advertisers deliver a better ad experience for customers

But hey, there was more — Jeff Cohen’s Summary of Amazon unBoxed Announcements sums up the highlights:

• Amazon Ads Announces AdTech Capabilities to Drive Improved Advertiser Outcomes

• Sponsored TV: Amazon Ads Expands Sponsored Ads Portfolio with a Self-Service Streaming TV Ad Solution for Brands of All Sizes

• Amazon rolls out AI-powered image generation to help advertisers deliver better ad experiences for customers.

• Ads on Prime Video

• Amazon Ads Announces Amazon Publisher Cloud, a New Clean Room Service for Publishers

Todd M. Piechowski from Envision Horizons also delivered a great summary: 6 of The Best Announcements at Amazon Unboxed & Why They Matter

Setting Amazon Ads in Context

To set Amazon ads in context: Amazon accounting for 37.5% of the entire retail media ad expenditure. Global Retail media is projected to rise 10.2% this year and 10.5% next year to $41.7bn, representing 13.6% of all ad spend. Mert Damlapinar digs in further in his analysis.

Movers & Shakers 🙌

• Society Brands announced an $11M additional equity investment bringing its additional equity raised since it’s $205M mixed debt/equity round up at inception to $25M of additional equity [PR Newswire]

• Globalbees posts $7.7M revenue with $740k loss for FY23 [Your Story]

Strategy 🦈

• Focus on getting international business profitable first: “Amazon pausesd its global expansion in 2023” [Marketplace Pulse]

• How 'household restocking’ startup The Rounds uses tech and AI to make sustainable e-commerce profitable [TechCrunch]

• After 11 Years, Costco Just Made a Quietly Remarkable Announcement. It's a Lesson in Leadership [Inc]

• Temu’s Win Over Shein in the US Is Hurting Its Bottom Line [Business of Fashion]

• Low-cost e-commerce rivals Shein and Temu shelve US court cases [Reuters]

• The vendor side is outweighing the seller side: “Bol still dominant seller on its own platform” [eCommerce News]

Events 🎤

• Amz Innovate, Nov 13-14, New York City, US

• ShopTalk, Mar 14-16, Las Vegas, US — Exhibitor opportunities

Make this week count 🙌

Christian