Amazon‘s two-day 2021 Prime Day event yielded about $6.8 billion in revenue, although nearly half of that came from third-party merchants, according to Morgan Stanley estimates.
Amazon, as is its usual custom, is not disclosing dollar sales figures for Prime Day, which ran over a 48-hour period June 21-22.
The ecommerce giant said Prime Day 2021 was the biggest two-day period ever for Amazon’s third-party sellers, “growing even more than Amazon’s retail business.” That led Morgan Stanley’s internet equity analyst team, led by Brian Nowak, to estimate that Prime Day generated $6.8 billion of gross merchandise sales (up 9% year over year), while Amazon core retail revenue from Prime Day grew about 7%, to $3.8 billion.
The Prime Day 2021 revenue estimates were in-line with Morgan Stanley’s previous assumptions, implying that Amazon will see just 2% sequential core retail revenue growth in the second quarter (below the long-term ~4% average), the firm said in note Thursday to clients.
However, the analysts added, “This may prove conservative the extent to which AMZN’s record-sized global Prime sub base (now 200mn) continues to expand its purchasing into more categories as we have seen historically…or the extent to which e-commerce behavior change (in categories like grocery) proves to be stickier than currently appreciated.” With the Prime Day 2021 revenue estimates, the Morgan Stanley team said, they are “comfortable” with their in-line Q3 revenue estimates amid post-pandemic re-opening, with the analysts modeling 5% sequential retail revenue growth (excluding Prime Day) for the third quarter.
Meanwhile, analysts at Bank of America estimated that total Prime Day gross sales were up 7% year over year to $9.55 billion. That was slower growth than past years but “still good enough to support solid 2Q GMV [gross merchandise value] growth on a tough 2Q comp,” referring to the fact that Amazon’s 2020 sales got a huge boost because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And both firms’ Prime Day estimates are much lower than the rough figure pegged by Adobe Analytics, which approximated U.S. sales from this year’s event at more than $11 billion (up 6% year over year). Adobe Analytics derives its estimates by tracking visits to U.S. retail sites, spanning more than 100 million items.
On Wednesday, Amazon announced that during Prime Day 2021, it sold more than 250 million items in 20 countries. The company also said Amazon Music promos drove more signups for Amazon Music Unlimited globally than on any other Prime Day, but didn’t elaborate.
The No. 1 bestseller during Prime Day 2021 was the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote, according to the company. In addition, Amazon claimed, “Customers purchased a record-setting number of Fire TVs, from brands including Toshiba and Insignia, during Prime Day and the two weeks leading up to this year’s event.” Amazon said customers bought hundreds of thousands of Amazon Fire tablets and Fire Kids tablets this Prime Day.
Best-selling categories worldwide for Prime Day 2021 included tools, beauty, nutrition, baby care, electronics including Amazon Devices, apparel and household products, per Amazon.
Members scored incredible deals on best-selling items in participating countries worldwide. Some of the top-selling produces (excluding Amazon devices) in the U.S. included: the Waterpik Electric Water Flosser, Orgain Organic Plant based Protein Powder, 23andMe Health DNA Test, iRobot Roomba 692 Robot Vacuum, and the Instant Pot Duo Plus 6 Quart 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker.
In April, Amazon said it had more than 200 million paid Prime members around the world. Perks of the program include free shipping on millions of products, unlimited access to Prime Video, ad-free listening to 2 million songs on Amazon Music, free games with Prime Gaming.
