Amazon.com Delivers Blowout Earnings in Q4 as Retail Growth Soars
Investing.com
Published Jan 30, 2020 04:03PM ET
Updated Jan 30, 2020 04:56PM ET
Amazon.com Earnings, Revenue Beat in Q4
Investing.com - Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) handily beat earnings expectations in the fourth quarter, led by strong performance in its core online retail business as the roll-out of its expedited shipping program bolstered growth in North America.
The stock soared nearly 12% in after-hours trading, pushing shares above $2,000.
Amazon announced earnings per share of $6.47 on revenue of $87.44 billion. Analysts polled by Investing.com anticipated EPS of $4.05 on revenue of $85.97B.
That compares to EPS of $6.04 on revenue of $72.38 billion in the same period a year before. Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) had reported EPS of $4.23 on revenue of $69.98 billion in the previous quarter.
Growth was led by strong performance in its North American retail business as the rollout of its one-day shipping program boosted sales.
"Today’s report is good enough to address all those concerns that have kept the Amazon’s shares under pressure over the past few months,” Investing.com analyst Haris Anwar said. “Higher spending on expediting shipments have paid off quite handsomely, with strong growth in the company’s e-commerce business. The other big push is coming from the high-margin AWS (cloud) business where Amazon is sustaining a high level of growth.”
“Strong performance for seller services and other services business also gave a boost to Amazon's gross margin, which was recently under pressure by the escalating shipping costs,” Anwar said.
“In a nutshell, this report should be enough to help Amazon stock to break its sluggish cycle and end its underperformance when compared to other tech giants.”
Retail sales in North America rose 21% to $53.7 billion.
“Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding — more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “We’ve made Prime delivery faster — the number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime’s free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year."
Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud business, generated revenue of $9.95 billion, above estimates of $9.84 billion. The beat in cloud services comes despite concerns that competition from cloud rivals like Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure would dent AWS growth.
The company guided first-quarter earnings in a range of $69-to-$73 billion, matching analysts' estimates of $71.59.
Get The News You Want
Written By: Investing.com
Trading in financial instruments and/or cryptocurrencies involves high risks including the risk of losing some, or all, of your investment amount, and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices of cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and may be affected by external factors such as financial, regulatory or political events. Trading on margin increases the financial risks.
Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider. All intellectual property rights are reserved by the providers and/or the exchange providing the data contained in this website.
Fusion Media may be compensated by the advertisers that appear on the website, based on your interaction with the advertisements or advertisers.