Earnings: Happy Holidays For Amazon, As Profits Rise 9 Percent; Sales Up 18 Percent
This story was written by David Kaplan.
The holiday was depressing for most retails, but Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) did pretty well comparatively. The online retailer said Q4 net income grew 9 percent to $225 million ($0.52 per diluted share) last year's $207 million ($0.48 per diluted share) while net sales were up 18 percent to $6.70 billion. The Seattle-based company beat consensus estimates from FactSet research, who had expected earnings of $0.40 cents a share on revenue of $6.48 billion, Marketwatch reported.
Full Year '08: Net sales gained 29 percent to $19.17 billion. Profits grew 36 percent to $645 million in 2008, or $1.49 per diluted share.
Still reticent about Kindle: Amazon didn't have anything more substantive to say about Kindle, aside from noting that demand was "strong" in Q4. The company also said the e-book reader's selection grew by 45,000 titles in the quarter, bringing the total to 230,000 titles offered. Also, newspapers in 8 of the top 10 metro areas in the U.S. became available on Kindle by the end of Q4. More to come
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By David Kaplan