Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN)
Amazon stock ascended sharply in after-hours trading on Thursday, following strong second-quarter net income that crushed Wall Street views.
The online retail giant announced its biggest quarterly profit ever, causing massive excitement among its investors.
Although overall top line growth was slightly lower than analysts had projected, that did not deter the shares from adding $58.85, or 3.25% in extended trading hours to 1,866.85.
The shares have jumped 54.6% since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gained 6.5%.
AMZN Earnings & Outlook
The retailer leaped a net income of $2.5 billion for the quarter, which translates to $5.07 per share. In the second quarter of the previous year, Amazon had net income of $197 million, or earnings of $4.67 per share.
Total net sales totaled to $52.9 billion compared to net sales of $37.96 billion in the same period last year. Analysts were eecting adjusted earnings of $2.48 per share on revenue of $53.37 billion.
Its North America retail segment posted operating profit of $1.84 billion, up from $436 million posted last year, and ahead of analyst consensus of $1.04 billion.
International retail segment recorded an operating loss of $494 million versus a loss of $724 million in the year-ago quarter, and ahead of $797 million estimate.
Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) segment had operating profit of $1.64 billion, and sales of $6.1 billion compared to sales of $4.1 billion last year. Analysts had modelled operating profit of $1.47 billion and sales of $6.1 billion for AWS, according to figures compiled by Thompson Reuters.
Amazon.com expects third-quarter revenue of $54-$57.5 billion, which is below analyst estimates of $58 billion.
Amazon CEO Comments
Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, commented, “We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are. There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year.”
“Our partners are creating a wide variety of new Alexa-enabled devices and experiences, including soundbars from Polk and Sonos; headphones from Jabra; smart home devices from ecobee and First Alert; Windows 10 PCs from Acer, HP, and Lenovo; and cars from automakers including BMW, Ford, and Toyota,” concluded Bezos.
Amazon.com, Inc. Company Profile
Amazon provides online retail shopping services in North America and internationally. The company operates through the Amazon Web Services, North America, and International segments.
The North America segment engages in subscriptions and retail sales of consumer products through North America-targeted websites, like www.amazon.ca and www.amazon.com.
The International segment provides subscriptions and retail sales of consumer products through internationally-targeted websites.
The Amazon Web Services division engages in international sales of database, compute, storage, and AWS service offerings for government agencies, academic institutions, start-ups, and enterprises.
The company was founded by Jeff Bezos in July 1994. Its headquarters are based in Seattle, Washington. –Reuters
