Amazon posts another dismal chapter for earnings

SEATTLE - Amazon.com (AMZN), long given slack by investors for turning in skimpy profits, isn't getting treated too kindly after reporting on Thursday that it suffered a bigger-than-expected loss in its second quarter, missing analysts' expectations.

The Seattle-based company posted a loss of $126 million, or 27 cents per share, compared with a loss of $7 million, or 2 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for a loss of 13 cents per share.

Revenue, however made a healthy jump. The company said sales rose 23 percent to $19.34 billion from $15.7 billion in the same quarter a year earlier, and beat Wall Street forecasts of $19.33 billion, according to Zacks.

Amazon has been feverishly spending to expand its product lineup. It introduced a smartphone due out this week, for instance, expanded Sunday deliveries and recently began offering a set-top video streaming box. Most recently, it announced a $9.99-a-month subscription service offering unlimited book reading (from a library of 600,000 titles) called Kindle Unlimited.

But it's Amazon's inability (or unwillingness) to turn those big revenues into healthy profits that has investors increasingly on edge.

Amazon shares have decreased 10 percent since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index has climbed 7.6 percent.

And in after-hours trading shortly after Amazon announced its latest results, investors were again dumping shares. After rising a slim 0.13 percent during regular hours, the stock had fallen by nearly 10 percent, or $35, to $323.10.

Looking forward, the company expects third-quarter revenue between $19.7 billion and $21.5 billion. Analysts expect $20.81 billion, according to FactSet.