Amazon Stock has an average year. Don’t blame the last fine.

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Alex Kraus / Bloomberg

Amazon.com was fined 1.13 billion euros ($ 1.2 billion) by Italy’s antitrust regulator, which said the tech and retail giant “had harmed its competitors in the market for e-commerce logistics services “.

Amazon (ticker: AMZN) said it would appeal the ruling, calling the proposed fine and remedies “unwarranted and disproportionate.”

“Amazon has a dominant position in the Italian marketplace intermediation services market, which Amazon has leveraged to drive the adoption of its own logistics service – Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) – by active sellers on Amazon.it at the expense of logistics services. offered by competing operators, as well as to strengthen its own dominant position, ”said AGCM, the Italian competition authority, in a statement posted on its website.

In an emailed statement to Barron’s, Amazon said it “strongly disagrees” with the Italian competition authority’s decision.

“More than half of all annual sales on Amazon in Italy come from SMEs, and their success is at the heart of our business model. Small and medium-sized businesses have several channels to sell their products online and offline: Amazon is just one of them.

“We are constantly investing to support the growth of the 18,000 Italian SMEs that sell on Amazon, and we provide several tools to our sellers, including those who handle shipments themselves,” the company added.

Amazon shares rose 0.4% to $ 3,538 on Thursday. The stock rose 8.6% this year, well below the gain of over 25% for the S&P 500. Competitors Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL) rose 32% and 70% respectively in 2021 .

At the end of October, Amazon reported disappointing third quarter results and weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter outlook.

The company’s results were weighed down by a range of factors, including tough comparisons with increased online shopping during the pandemic, ongoing product shortages, higher labor costs, increased shipping costs. and additional investments in the company’s order fulfillment operations.

Referring to a host of challenges as the holiday season approaches, CEO Andy Jassy said in October that Amazon will do “whatever it takes to minimize the impact on customers and business partners this season. holidays. It will cost us dearly in the short term, but it is the right priority for our customers and partners.

European regulatory agencies, for their part, have stepped up their crackdown on big tech companies. European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager has been at the forefront of this effort for much of the past decade.

Over the summer, Amazon was fined € 746 million from the European Union for violating EU data privacy rules, and in early November, Alphabet’s Google lost its appeal against a landmark European antitrust ruling and a $ 2.8 billion fine.

Apple was fined $ 1.2 billion last year by French antitrust authorities for anti-competitive behavior. Apple has appealed the decision.

Write to Joe Woelfel at [email protected]

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