Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
AMZN Earnings
Amazon, the largest internet-based retailer in America recorded second quarter earnings today after the market close on Thursday July 23rd, 2015. In a similar fashion to the way Google Inc. reported earnings and its subsequent post market earnings move last week, shares of Amazon zoomed higher when their numbers came out. Not only they do well, but they surprised most analysts as the earnings were stellar; posting a second quarter profit (versus an expected loss) and better than expected sales due to revenue increases. Shares traded fast and furious in the aftermarket session hitting a high of $573 dollars per share before closing at $565 per share, or up $83.32 (+17.28%). In regular session trading, AMZN was lower by $6.09 to $482.18, or – 1.25%. The options market also displayed heavy volume and activity leading up to the close of yesterday’s trading as traders and investors took their positions on how the stock might move after they reported.
The company posted per-share earnings of 19 cents, compared to the consensus estimate of a loss of 15 cents a share. Sales of $23.2 billion, up 20% from last year, also topped expectations of $22.4 billion. Some of the areas that contributed to this blowout are there cloud -based web services division ,a cut back and more conservative spending structure and taking over some package delivery from the largest carriers and rejiggering of its Lab126 hardware development unit after the flameout of its Fire smartphone last year. What is not clear is if their One-Day event dubbed Amazon “Prime Day” contributed to much, if any of this result. This is a “made-up” holiday sale event that clever merchandisers at Amazon conjured up to promote sales and publicity.
To put things into perspective, after today’s move in the aftermarket session of trading, AMZN has now overtaken the market cap of Walmart by sales in dollar terms.
Amazon.com Analyst and Conference Call Comments
One notable area discussed by new CFO brian Olsavsky was India,citing Booming sales in India are prompting Amazon to invest more to expand there, Olsavsky said in response to a question. “When we see a positive surprise, we double down on it and India is that kind of surprise,” the CFO said. “We’re super excited about India.” And when he was asked by analysts about that “Prime-Day” event he had this to say, “It surpassed all of our expectations,”.
The Impressive Chart
Please see the chart below for AMZN since the beginning of 2015. Note the price gaps in early February and late April showing huge demand at points since January of this year.
As many of us in the trading, investing and speculating community can likely attest to enjoying our very own online shopping experience, I guess we can all feel as though we helped to contribute to this price action since early 2015 as well as the after-hours affect on the share price post-earnings.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. It operates in two segments, North America and International. The company serves consumers through retail Websites, such as amazon.com and amazon.ca, which primarily include merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers. It also offers programs that enable sellers to sell their products on company’s Websites, and their own branded Websites; and programs, which allow authors, musicians, filmmakers, app developers, and others to publish and sell content. In addition, the company serves developers and enterprises through Amazon Web Services that provides compute, storage, database, analytics, applications, and deployment services that enable virtually various businesses. Further, it manufactures and sells electronic devices, including Kindle e-readers, fire tablets, fire TVs, echo, and fire phones; and provides Kindle Direct Publishing, an online platform that allows independent authors and publishers to make their books available in the Kindle Store. Additionally, the company offers Amazon Prime, an annual membership program, which provides free shipping of various items; access to instant streaming of movies and TV episodes; and access to books to borrow and read on a Kindle device, as well as provides publishing, digital content subscriptions, and advertising services; and co-branded credit card agreements. Amazon.com, Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Yahoo! Finance