not vested
Amazon posts largest profit in its history on sales, tax boostBy Jeffrey Dastin and Aishwarya Venugopal
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) on Thursday reported a
profit near $2 billion, the largest in its history, as the online retailer drew millions of new customers to its Prime fast-shipping club for the holiday season and as changes to U.S. tax law added to its bottom line.
Shares rose more than 6.4 percent in extended trading, after previously closing down 4 percent on the Nasdaq.
Seattle-based Amazon is using fast shipping, television shows exclusive to its website and forays into new technology, such as its voice-controlled Alexa devices, to win and keep high-spending Prime members. Its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFM) last year is helping it capture shoppers' grocery sales, too.
The world's largest online retailer said net income more than doubled to $1.86 billion, or $3.75 per share in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31. Its profit received a provisional $789 million boost from the U.S. Republican tax bill passed in December.
Analysts on average were expecting just $1.85 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (
http://tmsnrt.rs/24gibla)
Advertising and other revenue rose 62 percent to $1.74 billion.
Amazon's stock has outperformed the S&P 500, rising almost 50 percent since the start of the fourth quarter, compared with the S&P's 12 percent rise.
Its shares trade at a premium to many peers. The stock's price-to-earnings ratio is nearly 12 times that of cloud computing rivals Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), for instance.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is dueling with Microsoft to handle data and computing for large enterprises, saw its profit margin expand from the third quarter.
AWS posted a 45 percent rise in sales to $5.1 billion.
Amazon said it expects operating profit in the current quarter of between $300 million and $1 billion. Analysts were expecting $1.5 billion, according to analytics firm FactSet Street Account.
Source: Reuters
https://www.investing.com/news/stock-ma ... st-1184733
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"