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With the first disclosure of the number of people paying for its Amazon Prime subscription program, Amazon.com Inc. confirmed Wednesday that Prime has more members than the most prominent membership-based retail chain, Costco Wholesale Corp.
In his annual letter to shareholders, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos disclosed Wednesday afternoon that Amazon Prime has topped 100 million paid Prime members worldwide. Costco claimed 90.3 million card-carrying members as of the end of its most recent fiscal year, though many of those were multiple members paying through the same account, as paid subscriptions were disclosed as 49.4 million.
“In 2017 Amazon shipped more than 5 billion items with Prime worldwide, and more new members joined Prime than in any previous year — both worldwide and in the U.S.,” Bezos wrote in his letter.
Amazon charges $99 a year for Prime membership, which offers free two-day shipping on certain items, access to the company’s streaming-video library and other media, including Amazon Music and many e-books, along with other features. The company recently increased the monthly subscription price for Prime from $10.99 to $12.99, with student subscriptions bumped from $5.99 to $6.49.
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Amazon Prime is worldwide, while Costco has stores in 11 countries. Amazon has been actively pushing Prime into new countries, and Bezos said Wednesday that India has been especially receptive.
“Prime added more members in India in its first year than any previous geography in Amazon’s history,” the CEO wrote. “Prime selection in India now includes more than 40 million local products from third-party sellers, and Prime Video is investing in India original video content in a big way, including two recent premieres and over a dozen new shows in production.”
Bezos also confirmed Wednesday that Amazon expects Prime to soon be a factor in its Whole Foods grocery stores, after the e-commerce company acquired the brick-and-mortar chain for $13.7 billion last year. The move has been expected since the deal closed, and anticipation was heightened after Whole Foods loyalty program members received letters saying the program will be discontinued May 2.
“We’ve also begun the technical work needed to recognize Prime members at the point of sale and look forward to offering more Prime benefits to Whole Foods shoppers once that work is completed,” Bezos wrote.
Amazon has long avoided disclosure of certain sales and performance figures including Prime membership and sales of its electronics, like Echo speakers and Kindle tablets. Amazon tends to keep any disclosures beyond core financial metrics less specific, such as when it passes certain milestones like Prime topping 100 million subscribers.
Bezos did not give a precise figure for current memberships, and kept most other disclosures unspecific as well and similar to what was discussed in Amazon’s most recent earnings report.
“2017 was our best year yet for hardware sales,” Bezos wrote. “Customers bought tens of millions of Echo devices, and Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa were the best-selling products across all of Amazon — across all categories and all manufacturers.”
New information provided in Wednesday’s letter, beyond Prime memberships, included details on subscriptions to Amazon Music, a streaming service that Amazon has been pushing as an alternative to Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora .
“Amazon Music continues to grow fast and now has tens of millions of paid customers,” Bezos wrote. “Amazon Music Unlimited, our on-demand, ad-free offering, expanded to more than 30 new countries in 2017, and membership has more than doubled over the past six months.”
Amazon stock gained about 1.5% in after-hours trading Wednesday following the letter’s release, after closing with a 1.6% advance at $1,527.84. Shares have gained 30.6% so far this year, while the S&P 500 index has gained 1.2%.