Amazon’s Prime Day, the annual sales event in which the e-commerce giant offers deep discounts on all sorts of products to its Prime customers, has been in place since 2015. But ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been concern that this year’s event might not take place, at least not at the usual time.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that this year’s Prime Day will likely be delayed to the fall, as the company seeks to “return to pre-pandemic business operations.” The report cited “people familiar with the matter,” who said the decision was made to give the company more time to get prepared for the massive amount of orders that day.

The report also said that Amazon is now allowing unlimited shipments of nonessential items to its warehouses, after placing restrictions on such items in the early days of the pandemic.

Amazon has not yet confirmed the shift, which would place Prime Day less than three months from the start of the holiday shopping season.

Prime Day is typically held in July, although Amazon doesn’t announce the date long before it takes place. In 2019, per CNBC, Amazon made Prime Day a two-day event, in which the company said it sold 175 million items, and while there was no official sales total announced, the company said it sold more than on the previous Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

A report in April by Reuters, which cited internal meeting notes, had stated that Amazon was likely to push Prime Day back to August.

In recent weeks, Amazon has been linked to some high-profile, surprising potential acquisitions. Amazon was said to be in talks earlier this week to buy J.C. Penney, after that department store chain filed for bankruptcy, and earlier this month Amazon was reported to have interest in a purchase of the AMC movie theater chain.

In the newest edition of the Fortune 500, released this week, Amazon has jumped to the #2 spot, behind only Walmart, per Motley Fool. Amazon was fifth on the 2019 version of the list, but has since passed ExxonMobil, Apple and Berkshire Hathaway.

Amazon, as of Thursday, is currently the third most-valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion, which places it behind only Microsoft and Apple.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters