Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) released its Q4 2017 earnings results after closing bell tonight. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) earnings amounted to $3.75 per share on $60.45 billion in revenue, compared to the consensus estimates of $1.88 per share on $59.75 billion in sales. In the year-ago quarter, the online retailer reported $1.54 per share in earnings on $43.7 billion in revenue.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) earnings include tax reform benefit
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) earnings included a benefit of $789 million in connection with the tax reform bill.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)Web Services revenues rose from $3.54 billion last year to $5.11 billion in Q4 2017. Analysts had been looking for $4.7 billion. North America sales rose to $37.3 billion from $26.24 billion a year ago. Analysts had been projecting $36.23 billion. Net product sales rose to $41.3 billion from $30.6 billion a year ago, while net service sales increased to $19.1 billion from $13.1 billion a year ago.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)said that over 5 billion items were shipped using its Prime service in 2017, and more new paying subscribers signed up for Prime in 2017 than in any other year, both globally and domestically. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) also said its Fire TV Stock and Echo Dot were 2017’s best-selling products across its whole site, and buyers purchased “tens of millions of Echo devices” during the year.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Alexa surprises management
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)management said their expectations for Alexa in 2017 were “optimistic,” but despite that, they “far exceeded them.”
“We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very often — expect us to double down,” founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said in a statement on the Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) earnings results. “We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa. There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.”
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) provides strong Q1 2018 guidance
For Q1 2018, Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) expects revenue to be between $47.75 billion and $60.75 billion. The consensus was at $48.6 billion.
Although Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) stock ended the regular trading day down by more than 4%, it rallied in after-hours trading, climbing by about 3% to as high as $1,425.25.
