Amazon says units grew nearly 15% as delivery sped up

Amazon is selling far more items, faster and more cheaply per unit, and the fastest growth is in the everyday categories that bring shoppers back each week. That is the message chief executive Andy Jassy gave on the company's third quarter earnings call, as Amazon reported on its own news site. For grocers and mass retailers, the more important point is less the headline volume and more where it is coming from.

Volume on a very large base

Jassy said: "Year to date, units have grown nearly 15% year over year, having sold more than 30 billion items last year." He also said Amazon had added more than $90 billion in gross sales in the trailing 12 months, and that it was adding about double the gross sales per quarter of its next largest US competitor while taking retail market share. Amazon did not name that competitor.

Groceries are carrying the frequency

The grocery figures matter most for food retailers. Amazon said its grocery business, including perishables and everyday essentials, reached nearly $250 billion in gross sales in the trailing 12 months. It said fresh groceries and everyday essentials grew about 3x faster than the rest of its store and now represent about half of all units sold.

Amazon linked that growth to speed. It said it delivered more than 1.5 billion items to Prime customers same-day or overnight in Q3. Its rapid delivery service, Amazon Now, is available in over 450 towns and cities, and Amazon said items ordered through it were up 10x year over year.

The cost side

The operating point that rivals should watch is cost. Jassy said Amazon was on track to reduce cost to serve per unit for the fourth consecutive year. If faster delivery and lower unit cost really are arriving together, Amazon can keep funding price and convenience in low-basket, high-frequency categories that have traditionally favoured local stores. Jassy described delivery, cost to serve, groceries, pharmacy and AI shopping as force multipliers, adding that "we’re firing on all cylinders."

He also framed the remaining opportunity in store terms, saying that nearly 80% of retail currently occurs in physical stores.

What the figures do not show

These are management's own statements, chosen to make the case for the retail business. Gross sales is not the same as reported revenue, and the page gave no unit counts for the quarter, no grocery profitability and no split between Amazon's own sales and those of third-party sellers. Pharmacy and AI shopping were listed as priorities, but no figures were given for them. The unit growth is also measured year to date rather than for the quarter alone.

The useful test for a retail leader is whether Amazon's share of weekly essentials keeps rising in their own market, and whether its promised cost reductions show up as lower prices or faster delivery locally. Those are the signals that would turn an investor message into a change in customer behaviour.