Amazon Reports Its Best Quarterly Profit Ever, But Q4 Earnings Fall Short Of Expectations

Fourth quarter sales up 22 percent, but earnings-per-share significantly less than expected.

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Amazon shares are down more than 13 percent in after-hours trading thanks to a Q4 (i.e., the holiday quarter) earnings report that fell short of expectations.

Sure, the ecommerce giant reported its best-ever quarterly profit of $35.7 billion, but that’s below the $35.98 billion that Wall Street was expecting. Analytics also forecast earnings-per-share (EPS) of $1.56, but Amazon reported $1 EPS today. In its earnings announcement, Amazon says its profit was hurt by the “$1.2 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter.”

For the full calendar year, Amazon says net sales were up 20 percent to $107 billion.

Amazon also used today’s earnings announcement to tout the growth of Amazon Prime. While it didn’t reveal actual membership figures, it did say that Prime memberships grew by 51 percent worldwide in 2015, and were up 47 percent just in the US.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Matt McGee
Contributor
Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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