亞馬遜 (AMZN) 2019 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by. Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Amazon.com Q4 2019 Financial Results Teleconference. (Operator Instructions) Today's call is being recorded. For opening remarks, I will be turning the call over to the Director of Investor Relations, Shelly Kay Pfeiffer. Please go ahead.

感謝您的支持。大家好，歡迎參加亞馬遜 2019 年第四季財務業績電話會議。（操作員指示）今天的通話正在錄音。在開幕致詞時，我將把電話轉給投資者關係總監 Shelly Kay Pfeiffer。請繼續。

Hello, and welcome to our Q4 2019 financial results conference call. Joining us today to answer your questions are Brian Olsavsky, our CFO; and Dave Fildes, Director of Investor Relations. As you listen to today's conference call, we encourage you to have our press release in front of you, which includes our financial results as well as metrics and commentary on the quarter.

您好，歡迎參加我們 2019 年第四季財務業績電話會議。今天與我們一起回答您的問題的是我們的財務長 Brian Olsavsky；以及投資者關係總監 Dave Fildes。當您收聽今天的電話會議時，我們鼓勵您閱讀我們的新聞稿，其中包括我們的財務表現以及本季度的指標和評論。

Please note, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results for the comparable period of 2018. Our comments and responses to your questions reflect management's views as of today, January 30, 2020, only and will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in today's press release and our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

請注意，除非另有說明，本次電話會議中的所有比較都將針對我們 2018 年同期的結果。我們對您的問題的評論和回應僅反映管理層截至 2020 年 1 月 30 日的觀點，並將包含前瞻性陳述。實際結果可能存在重大差異。有關可能影響我們財務表現的因素的更多資​​訊包含在今天的新聞稿和我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中，包括我們最近的 10-K 表年度報告和後續文件。

During this call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. In our press release, slides accompanying this webcast and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted on our IR website, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures with comparable GAAP measures. Our guidance incorporates the order trends that we've seen to date and what we believe today to be appropriate assumptions. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and customer spending, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet, online commerce and cloud services and the various factors detailed in our filings with the SEC.

在本次電話會議中，我們可能會討論某些非公認會計準則財務指標。在我們的新聞稿、本次網路廣播附帶的幻燈片以及我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中（每一份都發佈在我們的投資者關係網站上），您將找到有關這些非公認會計準則指標的更多披露，包括這些指標與可比公認會計準則指標的對帳。我們的指導包含了我們迄今為止所看到的訂單趨勢以及我們今天認為合適的假設。我們的結果本質上是不可預測的，並且可能受到許多因素的重大影響，包括外匯匯率波動、全球經濟狀況和客戶支出的變化、世界事件、互聯網、線上商務和雲端服務的增長率以及我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中詳述的各種因素。

Our guidance also assumes, among other things, that we don't conclude any additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings or legal settlements. It's not possible to accurately predict demand for our goods and services, and therefore, our actual results could differ materially from our guidance.

我們的指導還假設，除其他事項外，我們不會完成任何額外的業務收購、投資、重組或法律和解。我們無法準確預測對我們的商品和服務的需求，因此，我們的實際結果可能與我們的指導有重大差異。

With that, we'll move to Q&A. Operator, please remind our listeners how to initiate a question.

接下來，我們將進入問答環節。接線員，請提醒我們的聽眾如何提出問題。

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is coming from the line of Heath Terry with Goldman Sachs.

（操作員指示）我們的第一個問題來自高盛的希思·特里。

Great. Really appreciate this. Just on the AWS business, as you look sort of at the strength that you saw in the quarter, particularly represented by the amount of dollars added quarter-over-quarter, is there anything in particular that you would call out either in terms of specific types of workloads, regions, specific customer types that you felt like drove the strength, particularly relative to the directional -- direction of growth that we were seeing in the earlier parts of the year?

偉大的。真的很感激。就 AWS 業務而言，當您看到本季的強勁表現時，特別是季度環比增長的金額，您是否認為在特定類型的工作負載、地區、特定客戶類型方面推動了這種強勁增長，特別是相對於我們在今年早些時候看到的增長方向而言？

No, I would not isolate it to any one set of customers or products. I think it's been pretty broad-based. And it's kind of the culmination of a lot of work on adding new products and features, adding to our sales and marketing teams and having better penetration in enterprise customers and hitting a lot of very different industries. So I think that's what you're seeing. We feel that our product set is -- leads the market. And we add to it at a quicker pace than our competition, so actually, the gap on capacity and features is growing as we speak.

不，我不會將其孤立於任何一組客戶或產品。我認為它的影響範圍相當廣泛。這是我們增加新產品和新功能、擴充銷售和行銷團隊、更好地滲透企業客戶並進入許多不同行業的大量工作的成果。所以我認為這就是你所看到的。我們認為我們的產品系列是－引領市場的。而且我們以比競爭對手更快的速度增加它，因此實際上，容量和功能的差距正在擴大。

We also think that there's a real network effect when you use AWS with the millions of active customers and tens of thousands of global partners. And we continue to expand. We're now in 69 availability zones across 22 geographic regions. So I think it's the combination of increased sales support, more and better products that hit customers' needs and also the geographic expansion is what you're seeing.

我們也認為，當您與數百萬活躍客戶和數萬全球合作夥伴一起使用 AWS 時，會產生真正的網路效應。而我們也將繼續擴張。我們目前涵蓋 22 個地理區域的 69 個可用區域。所以我認為，這是銷售支援增加、更多更好的產品滿足客戶需求以及地理擴張的結合，這就是你所看到的。

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Sebastian with Robert W. Baird.

我們的下一個問題來自羅伯特·W·貝爾德 (Robert W. Baird) 的科林·塞巴斯蒂安 (Colin Sebastian)。

Was just hoping you guys could disaggregate a bit the strength in seller services, how much of that was third-party marketplace commission specifically? And are you seeing more of an uptick in some of the other content and services?

只是希望你們能夠稍微分解一下賣家服務的優勢，其中有多少是第三方市場佣金？您是否看到其他一些內容和服務出現了更多成長？

On seller services, I would say it was just a very strong quarter, if that's what you're referring to, 31% growth in revenue. It was strong on a unit basis. And as you said, there's probably additional strength in FBA, which has higher fee set than MFN does. So -- but in general, if you step away, I think what you're seeing is more and more participation of third-party sellers in our one-day delivery program as we move through the year. That was particularly strong in Q4, and I think you'll see that more as we move into 2020.

關於賣家服務，我想說這是一個非常強勁的季度，如果您指的是這個的話，收入增長了 31%。從單位角度來看，它非常強大。正如您所說，FBA 可能具有額外的優勢，其費用比 MFN 更高。所以——但總的來說，如果你離開一下，我認為你會看到，隨著我們一年四季的發展，越來越多的第三方賣家參與我們的一日送達計畫。這在第四季度尤為強勁，我認為隨著我們進入 2020 年，你會看到更多這樣的情況。

Our next question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America.

我們的下一個問題來自美國銀行的賈斯汀·波斯特 (Justin Post)。

Just wondering if you could go high level what drove upside to your guidance on revenue in the quarter on the retail side. Anything there that you'd really call out? And then on the AWS investments, obviously, you just talked about investments starting in 3Q. Where are you in that investment? Your margins are still below peak. Where are you kind of in that investment cycle?

我只是想知道您是否可以更詳細地說明一下，是什麼推動了您對本季零售收入的預期上升。有什麼東西您真的想大聲喊出來嗎？然後關於 AWS 投資，顯然，您剛才談到了從第三季開始的投資。您在該項投資中處於什麼位置？您的利潤率仍然低於峰值。您目前處於投資週期的哪個階段？

Sure. Well, as I said, on revenue, we came in at $87.4 billion, which exceeded the high end of our range of $86.5 billion. $400 million of -- roughly $400 million of that was due to foreign exchange. But what we saw was essentially very strong holiday performance from the middle of November on. We also had a very big uptick in response to the one-day availability that's been building through the year.

當然。嗯，正如我所說，我們的收入達到了 874 億美元，超過了我們 865 億美元的最高限額。其中約 4 億美元是由於外匯造成的。但我們看到，從 11 月中旬開始，假期季節的表現基本上非常強勁。隨著全年單日票供應量的不斷增加，我們也獲得了很大的成長。

I think Prime has been very strong. We mentioned that we have more than 150 million paid Prime members globally now. And we mentioned that more people joined Prime in Q4 than any other quarter before. So a lot of good momentum there built up on the aggregation of benefits that we continue to add to the Prime program, most recently the one-day -- expansion of one-day shipping.

我認為 Prime 非常強大。我們提到，我們目前在全球擁有超過 1.5 億付費 Prime 會員。我們提到，第四季加入 Prime 的人數比之前任何一個季度都多。因此，我們不斷為 Prime 計劃增添各種好處，最近又增加了一日送達服務，這為 Prime 計劃帶來了許多良好勢頭。

On AWS, where are we in the cycle? I talked more in 2018, when the margins in AWS were closer to 30%, about the efficiency of infrastructure spend and -- versus prior years. So we continue to -- since that point, we've continued to add infrastructure capability and -- to support our global expansion as well. But what you're seeing probably more in the margins is the expansion of our sales and marketing effort at some of those costs as well as price decreases and longer-term contracts that we've signed with some of our customers. You notice on our balance sheet that our future commitments on the multiyear deals now stands at $30 billion at year-end, and that's up 54% year-over-year. So there's a lot of good momentum on the enterprise side as well.

在 AWS 上，我們處於週期的哪個階段？2018 年，當 AWS 的利潤率接近 30% 時，我更多地談論了基礎設施支出的效率以及與前幾年相比的情況。因此，從那時起，我們就不斷增加基礎設施能力，以支持我們的全球擴張。但您在利潤率上看到的更多可能是我們以某些成本擴大了銷售和行銷力度，以及降低了價格，並且與一些客戶簽訂了更長期的合約。您可以從我們的資產負債表上看到，截至年底，我們對多年期交易的未來承諾金額為 300 億美元，年增 54%。因此，企業方面也有很多良好的發展動能。

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer & Co.

我們的下一個問題來自 Oppenheimer & Co. 的 Jason Helfstein。

Just to ask about AWS again. The investors have become, I guess, recently concerned just about, again, the slowing AWS revenue and margin and whether it's a function of increased competition. So maybe just talk about how you're reacting. You did talk about spending on sales and price cuts. But just any more you can talk about the competitive environment.

只是想再次詢問有關 AWS 的問題。我想，投資人最近又開始擔心 AWS 營收和利潤率的放緩，以及這是否是競爭加劇的結果。所以也許只是談談你的反應。您確實談到了銷售和降價支出。但您也可以談論競爭環境。

Sure. I would probably argue a bit with the growth comments. As we see it here, we grew from a $30 billion revenue run rate at the end of 2018 to a $40 billion revenue run rate at the end of 2019. So we continue to be happy with our top line growth. The -- in dollar terms as opposed to percentages, we had a larger dollar increase in revenue, both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. So we're very happy with the progress of the revenue and our adoption and acceptance by customers.

當然。我可能會對成長評論提出一些異議。正如我們所看到的，我們的營收運行率從 2018 年底的 300 億美元成長到 2019 年底的 400 億美元。因此，我們對我們的營業收入成長感到滿意。以美元計算而非百分比，我們的營收年增和季增均較大。因此，我們對收入的成長以及客戶的採用和接受感到非常高興。

As far as competitive set is concerned, we -- again, we think that we have -- start with a very big lead in this space because of our many years of investment, not only in capacity but also in services and features that we provide to customers. We've learned from customers. We just had a great re:Invent conference in December, where all of our -- it was a great aggregation of partners and customers and developers. And at those events, we not only get to present our new products, and there were over 100 that were launched in December, but we also get to hear customer issues and help -- that helps sign our -- educate our forward road map.

就競爭力而言，我們——再次強調，我們認為——在這個領域已經佔據了非常大的領先優勢，這得益於我們多年來的投資，不僅在產能方面，而且在我們為客戶提供的服務和功能方面。我們從客戶身上學到了東西。我們剛剛在 12 月舉辦了一場精彩的 re:Invent 大會，我們所有的合作夥伴、客戶和開發人員都聚集在這次大會上。在這些活動中，我們不僅展示了我們的新產品（12 月推出了 100 多種產品），而且我們還可以聽取客戶的問題並提供幫助 — — 這有助於我們制定未來的路線圖。

So it's a great shared learning. I think customers react to it. Customers will be at different stages of their adoption curve. There's always different phases: first, moving to the cloud, then organizing on the cloud and then growing further. So there's a lot of movement. I said that repeatedly, I think, in the setting that any quarter -- quarter-to-quarter movement is going to be a little bumpy. But generally, what you're seeing is the convergence of a lot of investment, a lot of operational efficiency and a lot of innovation on behalf of customers.

所以這是一個很好的共享學習。我認為顧客對此有反應。客戶將處於採用曲線的不同階段。總是有不同的階段：首先，遷移到雲端，然後在雲端組織，然後進一步發展。因此有很多活動。我想，我反覆說過這一點，因為任何季度間的變化都會有點坎坷。但總體而言，您看到的是代表客戶的大量投資、大量營運效率和大量創新的整合。

Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Ju with Crédit Suisse.

我們的下一個問題來自瑞士信貸的 Stephen Ju。

I wanted to switch it up a little bit. I guess you guys called this out in your press release, but I'm wondering if you could talk about your efforts to get the SMBs and the micro SMBs online in India. What exactly is involved from a practical perspective? Do you need to have door-to-door sales folks? And what can you do to reduce friction between logistics payments and some of the other factors there? And second, what are these SMBs selling? Is it like long-tail inventory? Is it merchandise that you can get to exports to global buyer base? And do you think this could be content that could be exclusive to Amazon?

我想稍微改一下。我想你們在新聞稿中已經提到了這一點，但我想知道你們是否可以談談你們為讓印度的中小企業和微型中小企業上網所做的努力。從實際角度來看究竟涉及什麼？您需要上門推銷嗎？您可以做些什麼來減少物流支付和其他一些因素之間的摩擦呢？其次，這些中小企業銷售什麼？它像長尾庫存嗎？這是您可以出口到全球買家群體的商品嗎？您認為這可能是亞馬遜獨有的內容嗎？

Yes. Stephen, this is Dave. Thanks for the question. As you said, and I think we mentioned this in the release, we're definitely continuing to improve the experience in India for customers and sellers. Excited by some of the response we've seen. We are continuing to invest meaningfully in digitizing those, say, MSMBs, micro, small and medium-sized businesses. We did pledge to invest $1 billion to help digitize traders and those micro and small businesses across India. And we've got a goal of bringing more than 10 million online by 2025. So this billion dollar investment will help to enable $10 billion in cumulative Indian exports by 2025.

是的。史蒂芬，這是戴夫。謝謝你的提問。正如您所說，我想我們在發布會上也提到過這一點，我們肯定會繼續改善印度客戶和賣家的體驗。我們看到一些反應，感到很興奮。我們將繼續對中小企業、微型、小型和中型企業的數位化進行有意義的投資。我們確實承諾投資 10 億美元來幫助印度各地的貿易商和微型和小型企業數位化。我們的目標是到 2025 年讓超過 1,000 萬人上網。因此，這筆 10 億美元的投資將有助於印度在 2025 年實現 100 億美元的累計出口額。

A lot of different facets to those types of investments. I won't go into too much for specifics. But a lot of work being done there. We're also focused on job growth, job creation over there. Since we launched over in India in 2013, we've created over 700,000 direct and indirect jobs. So -- we also recently announced plans to create an additional 1 million jobs in India by 2025. So a lot of, I think, innovation, ideas, investment. That team over there continues to do a great job locally of taking a lot of the tenets that we've had at Amazon around innovation building and really run with that over there and done a great job of coming up with some interesting and new services and features that I think are specific to that region. And hopefully, as we continue to do that, we'll keep identifying areas over in India and tool sets and features over in India that we can bring back to other regions to help benefit other sellers and the other websites more broadly.

這些類型的投資有很多不同的面向。我不會談論太多細節。但那裡正在進行大量工作。我們也關注那裡的就業成長和創造就業機會。自 2013 年在印度開展業務以來，我們已經創造了超過 70 萬個直接和間接就業機會。因此—我們最近也宣布了到 2025 年在印度額外創造 100 萬個就業機會的計畫。所以我認為有很多創新、想法和投資。那裡的團隊繼續在當地出色地開展工作，將亞馬遜在創新建設方面的許多原則運用到當地，並在那裡真正地貫徹執行，出色地推出了一些我認為特定於該地區的有趣的新服務和功能。希望隨著我們繼續這樣做，我們將繼續確定印度的地區以及印度的工具集和功能，以便我們可以將其帶回其他地區，以幫助其他賣家和其他網站更廣泛地受益。

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根士丹利的 Brian Nowak。

I have 2. Just the first one, Brian, I think on one of the media interviews, you talked about how you're becoming more efficient with one-day and you continue -- with next-day delivery and continue to do so and talked about a billion dollars of cost in that current quarter. Maybe just sort of talk to us about some of the largest qualitative fix in variable cost sort of still associated with one-day and the processes and the opportunities for efficiency to really get that number down as we go throughout 2020. And then maybe any specific product categories or good categories where you've seen an acceleration in demand from one-day that you'd call out?

我有 2 個問題。首先，布萊恩，我記得在一次媒體採訪中，您談到瞭如何透過一日送達服務提高效率，並將繼續推行隔天送達服務，也談到了本季 10 億美元的成本。也許只是和我們談談可變成本中一些最大的定性修復，這些修復仍然與一天、流程和效率機會有關，以便在 2020 年真正降低這個數字。那麼，您是否注意到任何特定產品類別或優質產品類別的需求在一天之內就加速成長？

Sure. Let me make sure the numbers are understood. We had talked about, last year, about an initial step-up in cost of close to $800 million in the second quarter. We -- that carried into Q3, slightly higher in Q3. And then in Q4, last time that we were on this call, I mentioned that we estimated Q4 would be $1.5 billion penalty. Was slightly under that despite the higher volumes and revenue growth than was in our guidance.

當然。讓我確保大家能夠理解這些數字。去年我們曾討論過，第二季的成本初步增加近 8 億美元。我們 - 這延續到了第三季度，第三季度略有上升。然後在第四季度，上次我們開電話會議時，我提到我們估計第四季的罰款將是 15 億美元。儘管銷售和收入成長高於我們的預期，但實際收入仍略低於這一水平。

And looking ahead to Q1, we estimate approximately $1 billion of additional costs year-over-year. And again in Q2, we'll start to lap this. And that doesn't mean the delta goes to 0. It means that there'll be a step-up as we grow and expand on a volume basis, and then we'll see where our rates are on actually delivering and fulfilling one-day. So I will keep you posted on our results and guide in the future as to where we see those costs going.

展望第一季度，我們預計年比將增加約 10 億美元的成本。在第二季度，我們將再次開始解決這個問題。但這並不意味著增量會變成 0。這意味著隨著我們的數量增長和擴大，增量會有一個提升，然後我們會看到我們的實際交付和當日履行費率是多少。因此，我將隨時向您通報我們的結果，並指導未來這些成本的走向。

If you look at the efficiency or the -- first, the cost, they generally fall into a few buckets. It's obviously transportation where you're building out new transportation modes, you're adding new deliveries. Partners are adding new routes. Many times, they start with subscale volumes, and you build them out, you get more efficient, you get more volume, more package density. And that creates efficiency. When we started this, again, Q2 of last year, we also had an abrupt change to our fulfillment network in that when it's tuned for two-day delivery on the most part and you move to one-day, in a lot of cases, it's advantageous from a cost and transportation standpoint to have that inventory closer to the customer.

如果你看一下效率或——首先是成本，它們通常分為幾類。顯然，在交通運輸領域，您正在建立新的交通模式，您正在增加新的配送方式。合作夥伴正在增加新航線。很多時候，他們從小規模的產量開始，然後逐漸擴大規模，獲得更高的效率、更大的產量和更高的封裝密度。這就提高了效率。當我們在去年第二季度開始這項工作時，我們的配送網絡也發生了突然變化，大部分情況下，我們的配送時間為兩天，而現在改為一天，在很多情況下，從成本和運輸的角度來看，將庫存放在更靠近客戶的地方是有利的。

So we've -- last year, we're in the middle of that transition. We still are as we shift inventory to be more local, it will enable local deliveries to hit shorter cutoff times. So that will continue to become more efficient. We do see a -- we will have to scale our fulfillment center network further. We grew the square footage for fulfillment and transportation by 15% each of the last 2 years. And we look ahead and see a step-up in that this year as we start to build more capacity for the one-day. I haven't guided beyond Q1, but that's certainly something that will step up. But we get efficiencies as we learn and grow and handle more one-day volume.

所以，去年我們正處於這一轉型期。我們仍在將庫存轉移到更本地化的地方，這將使本地交付的截止時間更短。因此，效率將會不斷提高。我們確實看到——我們必須進一步擴大我們的履行中心網絡。過去兩年，我們的配送和運輸面積每年增加 15%。展望未來，隨著我們開始建立更多的一日遊運力，我們看到今年這數字將會進一步提升。我還沒有對第一季之後的情況做出指導，但這肯定會有所進步。但隨著我們學習、成長並處理更多的單日業務量，我們的效率也提高了。

The third area is foregone ship revenue, just simply because we're having free shipment and no longer charging for it. That unfortunately doesn't leverage, but it -- we do start to lap it after a while. So I would say that just as we've had other shocks to our warehouse system over the years from going to -- from media to almost every product you can imagine to having a cycle of increased third-party presence in the FBA program now to one-day, we have a history here where we can look for opportunities to be more efficient and lower the -- any cost penalties as we move forward.

第三個面向是放棄運輸收入，只是因為我們提供免費運輸，不再收取費用。不幸的是，這並沒有起到什麼作用，但是過了一段時間我們確實開始解決這個問題。所以我想說，就像我們多年來倉庫系統所遭受的其他衝擊一樣，從媒體到幾乎所有你能想到的產品，再到現在第三方在FBA計劃中的存在感不斷增加，再到一日達，我們在這裡也有一段歷史，我們可以尋找機會提高效率，降低任何成本損失。

Our next question comes from the line of Dan Salmon with BMO Capital Markets.

我們的下一個問題來自 BMO 資本市場的 Dan Salmon。

Just to follow up on one-day shipping. You noted that you begin to lap the beginning of the initiative here in the second quarter, and that, naturally, costs can flow up with volumes. But just to be clear with you, is the idea here is we anniversary at that sort of incremental expansion of one-day shipping, either regionally or certain SKUs is functionally finished? I just want to make sure I understand that properly. And then just -- we can see the other number reported. Just any color within there on the advertising business. And in particular, would love to hear an update just a bit on some of your brand initiatives there. I know that probably wasn't the focus in the holiday season, but it seems to be an important growing part.

只是為了跟進一日發貨的情況。您指出，您在第二季度開始實施該計劃，成本自然會隨著數量的增加而上升。但需要明確的是，我們這裡的想法是，在區域或某些 SKU 上，這種一日送達服務的增量擴展在功能上已經完成了嗎？我只是想確保我正確理解了這一點。然後——我們可以看到報告的另一個數字。廣告業務只要有顏色就好。特別是，我很想聽聽你們在那裡的一些品牌舉措的最新消息。我知道這可能不是假期的重點，但它似乎是一個重要的成長部分。

Sure. Let me start on the one-day. So yes, we do see expansion of the one-day program as we move through the year. We've been expanding since we started this effort in Q2 of last year. Expansion means additional cities, additional routes, additional ZIP codes. But more -- I think what you'll see more in 2020 is also an -- more effort internationally, more costs internationally. We have greatly improved our selection of one-day in -- particularly in Europe and Japan. We started with higher one-day percentage of our shipments in those geographies, but we do have to take steps and are taking steps to increase that. And we expect that to be -- start to be a little more balanced cost globally as we move into 2020.

當然。讓我從一天開始說起。是的，隨著時間的推移，我們確實看到了一日計畫的擴展。自去年第二季開始這項工作以來，我們一直在不斷擴大。擴張意味著增加城市、增加路線、增加郵遞區號。但更重要的是——我認為你在 2020 年還會看到——國際上要付出更多努力，付出更多成本。我們大大改善了一日遊的選擇——特別是在歐洲和日本。我們一開始在這些地區就擁有較高的單日出貨量百分比，但我們必須採取措施並且正在採取措施來提高這一比例。我們預計，隨著進入 2020 年，全球成本將開始更加平衡。

Yes. Dan, in terms of your question around brands. We're focused on certainly brands as an advertising customer set and a lot of focus on providing the products and tools that are going to help customers and really inspire them. So things that we're really excited about, stores, so a brand can customize and curate a multipage store. It allows them to better tell customers who they are and share their story. So we can help deepen the brand engagement and the customer loyalty through that type of option.

是的。丹，關於你提出的品牌問題。我們專注於將品牌作為廣告客戶群，並專注於提供能夠幫助客戶並真正激勵他們的產品和工具。所以我們真正興奮的是商店，這樣品牌就可以客製化和管理多頁商店。它使他們能夠更好地告訴客戶他們是誰並分享他們的故事。因此，我們可以透過這種選擇來幫助加深品牌參與度和客戶忠誠度。

Some other things like posts, which helps customers discover products and brands. And it's through a curated feed that features the brand's lifestyle content, and it's on a mobile detail page. And there's international expansion in some other areas. I think broadly, with advertising, so much of this is about having -- developing great relationships with these advertisers because I think they appreciate the fidelity we can provide around shopping outcomes. We're uniquely positioned to do this, given our retail business.

其他一些內容，例如帖子，可以幫助客戶發現產品和品牌。它是透過精選的資訊流呈現該品牌的生活方式內容，並且位於行動詳細資訊頁面上。而其他一些領域也在進行國際擴張。我認為，從廣義上講，對於廣告來說，很大程度上在於與這些廣告商建立良好的關係，因為我認為他們欣賞我們在購物結果方面所能提供的保真度。鑑於我們的零售業務，我們具有獨特的優勢來做到這一點。

On the advertising business -- or rather, I should say, other revenue, that line item grew about 41% year-over-year. Advertising is the biggest piece of that. That line item is growing at about the same rate. Advertising revenue is, as a subset, been growing at about the same rate year-over-year in the fourth quarter than it did in the third quarter.

就廣告業務而言——或者更確切地說，其他收入，該項目同比增長約 41%。廣告是其中最大的一塊。該項目正以大致相同的速度成長。作為一個子集，廣告收入在第四季的年成長率與第三季大致相同。

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with UBS.

我們的下一個問題來自瑞銀的 Eric Sheridan。

Maybe a 2-part question on AWS, if I can. You called out the depreciation change with respect to AWS going forward. Just wanted to better understand some of the decisions that were made on useful life that drove that decision and how to think about that from a modeling perspective going forward. And then the second part would be, what does that mean in terms of the way you're thinking about forward CapEx cycles for the AWS business, if you're assuming useful life is moving out maybe than prior assumptions?

如果可以的話，也許可以問一個關於 AWS 的兩部分問題。您提到了未來 AWS 的折舊變更。只是想更好地理解在使用壽命方面做出的一些決定，這些決定推動了這個決定，以及如何從建模的角度來思考這個問題。然後第二部分是，如果您假設使用壽命可能比先前的假設更長，那麼這對您考慮 AWS 業務的未來資本支出週期意味著什麼？

Sure. Thanks for bringing that up. So we, as a practice, monitor and review the useful life of our depreciable assets on a regular basis to make sure that our financial statements reflect our best estimate of how long the assets are going to be used in operations. In Q4, and we've been looking at it in both the FCs, fulfillment centers, and also AWS annually. As we looked in Q4 of 2019, we believe it's -- there's enough trend now to show that the useful life is exceeding 4 years. We have been -- for our servers, and we had been depreciating them over 3 years. So we are going to start depreciating them on a 4-year basis. It doesn't unwind any depreciation that's already been booked. It just takes the asset from its current status and extends the depreciation period, and then new assets will be put into play -- will extend out for 4 years instead of 3, and we'll continue to revisit this.

當然。謝謝你提出這個問題。因此，我們通常會定期監控和審查折舊資產的使用壽命，以確保我們的財務報表反映我們對資產在營運中使用時間的最佳估計。在第四季度，我們每年都會在 FC、履行中心和 AWS 中關注它。正如我們在 2019 年第四季所看到的，我們相信——現在有足夠的趨勢表明使用壽命超過 4 年。我們一直在為我們的伺服器進行折舊，並且我們已經在三年內對它們進行了折舊。因此我們將開始以 4 年為週期對它們進行折舊。它不會取消任何已經登記的折舊。它只是將資產從其當前狀態中剝離出來並延長折舊期，然後新資產將投入使用 - 將延長 4 年而不是 3 年，我們將繼續重新審視這一點。

I do want to point out it's not just an accounting-related change. It's rather a reflection of the work that we've done to make our server capacity last longer. We've been operating at scale for over 13 years in this business, and we continue to refine our software to run more efficiently on the hardware. It then lowers stress and extends the useful life both through the servers that we use in the AWS business and also the service that we use to support our own Amazon businesses. So -- and despite that, we give AWS customers and actually, because of this, AWS customers continue to get access to the latest technologies more quickly than ever before.

我確實想指出這不僅僅是與會計相關的變化。這反而反映了我們為延長伺服器容量所付出的努力。我們在這個行業已經大規模運營了 13 年多，我們不斷改進我們的軟體以便在硬體上更有效率地運行。然後，它可以降低壓力並延長使用壽命，無論是透過我們在 AWS 業務中使用的伺服器，還是透過我們用來支援我們自己的亞馬遜業務的服務。因此 — — 儘管如此，我們仍為 AWS 客戶提供服務，實際上，正因為如此，AWS 客戶才能比以往更快地獲得最新技術。

So we are essentially reflecting the fact that we have gotten better at extending the useful life here and now building that into our financials moving forward. Yes, you're right, it should also impact our need and our timing of capital. I would say that it's also been part of the reason that we've been able to keep capital relatively in check the last 2 years in the infrastructure area. But it's $800 -- excuse me, $800 million lower depreciation expense in the quarter, and it will be consistent. It will change quarter-to-quarter; we will update you. But as you can see in our financial statements, it's about $2.3 billion impact in 2020.

因此，我們基本上反映了這樣一個事實，即我們在延長使用壽命方面已經做得更好，並且現在將其融入我們未來的財務狀況中。是的，你說得對，它也應該影響我們對資本的需求和時機。我想說，這也是我們過去兩年能夠在基礎建設領域相對控制資本的原因之一。但這是 8 億美元——對不起，本季折舊費用減少了 8 億美元，而且會保持一致。它將逐季度變更；我們將向您更新最新情況。但正如您在我們的財務報表中所看到的，2020 年的影響約為 23 億美元。

Yes. And just kind of on the modeling point too, on that, the $800 million is in Q1. We do think that the -- for that accounting impact effectively, we expect that, that amount will decrease as we go through the year. And it's tech infrastructure assets. So it's -- I should say the servers are tech infrastructure assets. So when you think about segments, the majority of these relate to the AWS segment.

是的。從建模角度來看，8 億美元是在第一季。我們確實認為——對於會計影響而言，我們預計，隨著時間的推移，這筆金額將會減少。這是技術基礎設施資產。所以——我應該說伺服器是技術基礎設施資產。因此，當您考慮細分市場時，其中大多數都與 AWS 細分市場相關。

Our next question comes from the line of Ron Josey with JMP Securities.

我們的下一個問題來自 JMP Securities 的 Ron Josey。

Brian, I just want to ask a little bit more about the holiday season, given the beat on the top line and see if there's any way to quantify maybe the impact from the shortened holiday shopping season. I mean it doesn't seem like much, just given the better results in online sales and retail third-party seller services. But is there any way to think about the 6 less days? And then also, you mentioned last quarter an impact from the Japanese consumption tax. Any sort of impact? Did that go according to plan? Or any thoughts there would be helpful.

布萊恩，考慮到營業額的成長，我只想多問一些有關假日季的問題，看看是否有辦法量化縮短的假日購物季帶來的影響。我的意思是這看起來沒什麼，只是在線銷售和零售第三方賣家服務取得了更好的結果。但有什麼辦法可以考慮少掉的6天嗎？另外，您提到了上個季度日本消費稅的影響。有什麼影響嗎？一切都按照計畫進行嗎？或任何想法都會有幫助。

Yes. First of all, on the -- there were 2 items we discussed last quarter with the Japan consumption tax raising from 8% to 10% effective October 1. The net result was a pull forward of some purchases by Japanese customers into Q3 and also some negative elasticity effects post October 1. The other item was Diwali timing, the Indian holiday, which has a very large swing factor on international revenues, is it moved more into the third quarter this year versus -- in 2019 versus 2018. So it was a help to Q3 and a penalty to Q4. Those 2 items impacted the Q4 growth rate negatively by about 300 basis points. That was our estimate, and we believe that was the actual outcome.

是的。首先，上個季度我們討論了兩個問題，一個是日本消費稅從 10 月 1 日起從 8% 提高到 10%。最終結果是日本消費者的部分購買提前到第三季度， 10 月 1 日之後也產生了一些負彈性效應。另一個問題是排燈節的時間，這個印度節日對國際收入的影響非常大，與 2018 年相比，2019 年排燈節的開始時間今年更多地推遲到了第三季度。所以這對 Q3 有幫助，但對 Q4 則不利。這兩項因素對第四季的成長率產生了約300個基點的負面衝擊。這是我們的估計，我們相信這也是實際結果。

On the international.

在國際上。

On the international segment, excuse me, yes. The -- sorry, the first question was, oh, the holiday season. Yes. We don't see that as a factor actually. And I mentioned that last call as it wasn't incorporated into our guidance in a negative fashion. The way we look at it and the way we believe it works, at least in our business, is that customers will have a holiday budget, and they will spend it between generally the middle of November. It's creeping up to the early part of November through the holiday season. And we do see obviously spikes in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and we also see relative tick-up in trends as we get closer to the holiday and before the shipping threshold cutoff. So there's a polarization of -- tends to be a polarization to early shipping -- or excuse me, early purchase and late purchases.

關於國際部分，對不起，是的。抱歉，第一個問題是假期。是的。實際上我們並不認為這是一個因素。我提到最後一次通話是因為它並沒有以消極的方式納入我們的指導中。我們對此的看法以及我們認為它有效的方式（至少在我們的業務中）是，客戶會有假期預算，他們通常會在 11 月中旬花掉這筆預算。假期即將進入十一月初。我們確實看到黑色星期五和網路星期一出現明顯的激增，而且隨著假期臨近和運輸門檻截止之前，我們也看到趨勢相對上升。因此存在著兩極分化——傾向於早期發貨——或者對不起，早期購買和晚期購買的兩極分化。

As far as the 6 days sort of time period between Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday, we don't see an impact on that. Perhaps it's a bigger issue for stores and foot traffic, but we don't notice it in our business.

就感恩節和聖誕節假期之間的 6 天時間段而言，我們認為這不會產生影響。或許這對商店和客流量來說是一個更大的問題，但我們在業務中卻沒有註意到這一點。

Our next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根大通的 Doug Anmuth。

I just want to shift gears to grocery. I know you added AmazonFresh into Prime, kind of removing the previous $14.99 a month component there and putting it into Prime, and you talked about the 2,000 U.S. cities and towns with 2-hour delivery. Can you just talk about what the early impact there is of bundling kind of Fresh into Prime at this point and then just how you're thinking about your grocery strategy as you're positioned now?

我只是想換個方式去買雜貨。我知道你們將 AmazonFresh 添加到 Prime 中，取消了之前每月 14.99 美元的部分並將其放入 Prime 中，並且你們還談到了 2,000 個美國城鎮提供 2 小時送達服務。您能否談談將 Fresh 捆綁到 Prime 中會產生哪些早期影響，以及您現在如何考慮您的食品雜貨策略？

Sure. Thanks for your question. So early results are good. We -- our grocery delivery orders from the combination of AmazonFresh and Whole Foods Market more than doubled in the fourth quarter year-over-year. So we believe customers are starting to notice and take advantage of this. We wanted to take -- we will see where people's tastes and preferences will take them. We are -- whether they go to the store, the Whole Foods Market store, whether they use Prime Now or Amazon delivery for their groceries. Right now, we're really just testing and reacting to the customer demand and the customers' preferences, and we'll do so for the foreseeable future.

當然。謝謝你的提問。因此早期結果還是不錯的。我們—來自 AmazonFresh 和 Whole Foods Market 的雜貨配送訂單在第四季度同比增長了一倍多。因此我們相信客戶已經開始注意到並利用這一點。我們想要──我們將看看人們的品味和偏好會把它們帶往何方。無論他們去商店、全食超市商店，無論他們使用 Prime Now 還是亞馬遜送貨上門購買雜貨，我們都會為他們提供服務。目前，我們實際上只是在測試並回應客戶需求和客戶偏好，並且在可預見的未來我們仍將這樣做。

Our final question will come from the line of Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets.

我們的最後一個問題來自加拿大皇家銀行資本市場的馬克‧馬哈尼 (Mark Mahaney)。

Okay. Then I'll throw off 3 quick ones. Just talk a little bit more about gross margins in the quarter. You had -- the year-over-year trend was negative last quarter, but it turned, reversed and was up this quarter. So if there are any unusual factors you'd want to call out there. Second, the -- I don't want to read over a lot into your guidance, but every year for the last 5 years, you've always guided to operating profit down sequentially, and then you maybe delivered better than that, but you always guided down. This year, your high end of your range is actually above what you obviously did in the fourth quarter. Are you just trying to remind people, tell people, educate people on how the mix shift in the business towards AWS and advertising is just changing the profit profile of the business? So any more color there. And then last one, since Sunday is coming up, I know you talked about the AWS customers, and you mentioned the Seattle Seahawks, but what about the 49ers?

好的。然後我會快速拋出 3 個。請再多談談本季的毛利率。上個季度的同比趨勢是負面的，但本季卻出現逆轉並上升。因此，如果有任何不尋常的因素，您會想要指出來。其次，我不想對您的指導進行過多的解讀，但過去 5 年裡，每年您總是指導營業利潤連續下降，然後您的業績可能比這更好，但您總是指導利潤下降。今年，您的預期最高值實際上高於第四季度的預期。您是否只是想提醒人們、告訴人們、教育人們業務轉變為 AWS 和廣告的組合如何改變業務的利潤狀況？那裡還有更多顏色嗎？最後一個問題，由於週日即將到來，我知道您談到了 AWS 客戶，並且提到了西雅圖海鷹隊，但 49 人隊呢？

Good luck, 49ers. I'll get that out there first. Good luck, Kansas City Chiefs fans. We're indifferent. Let me start with your second one on -- sorry, the -- start with gross margin.

祝你好運，49人隊。我先把它說出來。祝堪薩斯城酋長球迷好運。我們無動於衷。讓我從你的第二個問題開始——抱歉，從毛利率開始。

Yes. So I don't think there's anything too surprising you caught there. I think we continue to see some good growth in the third-party business. You saw that accelerate some. We're continuing to see that trend of more FBA sellers signing and taking a larger percentage of the total 3P mix of units that are sold through, so that continues to do well. And as Brian mentioned earlier, we think some of that has to do with the program keeps getting better with faster shipping and whatnot. We've invested many billions of dollars in that program to make it even better for sellers. AWS had a strong quarter, of course, so that helps on the gross margin side as well.

是的。所以我不認為你在那裡發現什麼太令人驚訝的事情。我認為我們將繼續看到第三方業務的良好成長。您會看到它加速了一些。我們繼續看到這樣的趨勢：越來越多的 FBA 賣家簽約並佔據透過第三方平台銷售的商品總量的更大比例，因此這種趨勢繼續保持良好。正如 Brian 之前提到的，我們認為這與該計劃的不斷改進、運輸速度的加快等有關。我們已經在該計劃上投資了數十億美元，以使其對賣家更加有利。當然，AWS 本季表現強勁，這對毛利率也有幫助。

And then on transportation, I think you saw the outbound shipping costs to grow around 43% year-over-year. So certainly up a good deal versus the trend line we saw in 2018. But of course, that's reflective of one-day and overall relative to our expectations. As Brian said, with the $1.5 billion we guided to, we came in a bit under that. So some of that was certainly part of some better-than-expected transportation efficiencies.

在運輸方面，我認為您會看到出境運輸成本年增約 43%。因此，與我們在 2018 年看到的趨勢線相比，肯定有大幅上漲。但當然，這反映的是一天的情況，並且總體上符合我們的預期。正如布萊恩所說，我們預計的 15 億美元資金，實際投入略低於這個數字。因此，這肯定是運輸效率優於預期的一部分。

And on the comment on seasonality of guidance and Q1, that -- I think the historic trend of peaking a bit in operating income in Q4 and then stepping down in Q1 has been broken up a little bit as we've had the balance of AWS and some other things. But if you actually look back to Q1 of last year, it was the highest operating income quarter on record, and that's one of the -- makes a difficult comp this year because we had the, if you remember, the slowdown in expenditures in 2018 in things like fixed -- adding of headcount, warehouse space, infrastructure costs, not to 0 but like down off of prior investment levels in 2016 and 2017. A lot of that continued -- that cost baseline continued into Q1 of 2019, and it actually was a super efficient quarter from a cost and profit standpoint.

關於指導和第一季的季節性評論，我認為，由於我們在 AWS 和其他一些方面取得了平衡，第四季度營業收入達到峰值，第一季下降的歷史趨勢已經被打破。但如果你回顧去年第一季度，你會發現這是有史以​​來最高的營業收入季度，這也是今年難以比較的一個因素，因為如果你還記得的話，2018 年我們在固定支出方面的支出有所放緩——增加員工人數、倉庫空間、基礎設施成本，不是降至 0，而是低於 2016 年和 2017 年的投資水平。很多情況都持續了下去——這個成本基線持續到了 2019 年第一季度，從成本和利潤的角度來看，這實際上是一個超級高效的季度。

Q2 of last year, we started to again make larger investments, particularly in one-day. And so that's now something that is lapping in Q1 of this year because we didn't really have one-day in Q1 of last year. But -- so I think there's -- it's hard to draw those parallels between quarters anymore. I will though mention the guidance that we do have the $800 million of lower depreciation from our extension of our server useful lives, which is part of the range that we gave you of $3 billion to $4.2 billion.

從去年第二季開始，我們又開始進行更大規模的投資，特別是在一日遊領域。所以這是今年第一季發生的事情，因為去年第一季我們實際上沒有一天。但是 — — 所以我認為 — — 現在很難再在各個季度之間進行比較。不過，我要提到，我們確實透過延長伺服器使用壽命而降低了 8 億美元的折舊費用，這是我們給出的 30 億美元至 42 億美元範圍的一部分。

Thanks for joining us today on the call and for your questions. A replay will be available on our Investor Relations website at least through the end of the quarter. We appreciate your interest in Amazon, and we look forward to talking with you again next quarter.

感謝您今天參加電話會議並提出問題。重播將至少在本季末在我們的投資者關係網站上提供。感謝您對亞馬遜的關注，我們期待下個季度再次與您交談。