Amazon posts hefty loss
NEW YORK Amazon's (AMZN) stock is falling after the world's largest online retailer reported third-quarter results below Wall Street's expectations, including a large loss that was weighed by its stake in online deals service LivingSocial.
Amazon.com posted a loss of $274 million, or 60 cents per share, in the July-September period. That's down from earnings of $63 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier.
The latest quarter's results include a loss of 37 cents per share related to Amazon's stake in LivingSocial. Without this charge, it still would have lost 23 cents per share, worse than what analysts are expecting.
- Amazon hiring 50,000 holiday workers
- Best Buy to match some rivals' online pricing
- Wal-Mart will stop selling Amazon.com Kindles
Revenue grew 27 percent to $13.81 billion, from $10.88 billion, falling short of analysts' expectations.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet, on average, were expecting a loss of 7 cents per share on revenue of $13.91 billion.
Amazon said its $199 Kindle Fire HD tablet is its best-selling product worldwide, but as usual, it did not give specific sales figures.
"Our approach is to work hard to charge less. Sell devices near breakeven and you can pack a lot of sophisticated hardware into a very low price point," founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
Amazon has a larger version of the Kindle Fire HD out next month.
Amazon's results come two days after Apple Inc. introduced a smaller iPad, the Mini, for $329. In its press release announcing the results, Amazon included a list trumpeting its high-definition Kindle Fires as cheaper than the iPad Mini and with more features. However, Apple's iPad has a much wider selection of third-party apps.
Seattle-based Amazon's stock slid $6.42, or 2.9 percent, to $216.50 in after-hours trading. The stock had closed down $5.57, or 2.4 percent, at $222.92 in the regular trading session.