Amazon’s core retail business has experienced a 15 per cent sales growth rate, the slowest since 2019.

The growth rate was lower than analyst expectations and the company’s shares dropped 7 per cent after its financial results were published.

The e-commerce giant attributed the results to consumers doing “things besides shopping”, as pandemic restrictions have loosened.

However, Amazon reported overall revenue growth of 27 per cent to $113 billion for the quarter ending June, with its cloud computing division, AWS, and its advertising business performing strongly.

Profits for the quarter rose 48 per cent to $7.8 billion.

Amazon remains a dominant force in UK online retail, accounting for more than a quarter of all UK online spend, according to a report from Wunderman Thompson Commerce released earlier this month.

The news comes after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos formally stepped down from the role of chief executive at Amazon on 7 July.

Andy Jassy, who previously served as head of AWS, is set to lead the company going forward.

"Amazon is increasingly bumping up against the law of large numbers - particularly in US retail,” said Nicholas Hyett, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. "When you're only selling $1,000 of product a year, boosting sales by 40 per cent is easy.”

He added: "When your annualised sales reach $400 billion, finding an extra $160 billion of sales is pretty difficult."

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