Amazon says sales are picking up following a big Prime Day

Amazon’s growth has slowed down in recent quarters after surging during the pandemic, but the company is expecting things to pick up soon. In its second quarter earnings release on Thursday, Amazon said that its net sales grew just 7 percent year over year but that they’ll go up by an estimated 13 to 17 percent in the third quarter — which will account for sales from the company’s massive Prime Day shopping extravaganza.

Sales growth has been on a steady decline for more than a year at Amazon:

While we don’t yet know the specific results from this year’s Prime Day, which took place earlier in July, Amazon has claimed that it was the “biggest Prime Day event ever,” that Prime members bought “more than 300 million items worldwide,” and that more than 100,000 items were purchased per minute, including more devices than any previous Prime Day event.

Although growth has slowed, it didn’t slow as much as feared, and the company’s stock price has jumped in after-hours trading. And Amazon is still bringing in a lot of money, earning $121.2 billion in sales in the second quarter. However, those sales weren’t enough to stave off a net loss of $2 billion, which was due in large part to a $3.9 billion loss from its investment in the electric vehicle company Rivian.

The better than expected results could indicate that Andy Jassy, who took over as CEO from founder Jeff Bezos just over a year ago, is starting to right the ship. Jassy has had a turbulent first year in the post; in addition to dealing with the rapidly slowing growth, there have been unionization efforts at Amazon warehouses (including the first successful unionization vote), and he’s had to find a replacement for retail CEO Dave Clark, a 23-year Amazon veteran who resigned in June. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Jassy spent much of his first year getting a handle on the company’s retail and logistics operation that had overexpanded during the pandemic.