Amazon posts highest Q4 net profit yet, but Wall St unhappy with seasonal revenues

29 Jan 2016

Amazon is transitioning from a pure-play e-commerce vendor into a sophisticated technology giant

E-commerce and cloud giant Amazon reported Q4 revenues were up 22pc year-on-year to $35.75bn and the company reported its highest net profit of $482m.

But this wasn’t enough for investors on Wall Street, who expected higher revenues of $3.9bn and were disappointed in the company’s AWS and cloud business performance, where revenues growth had slowed from 80pc on average over the last two years to 69pc, with revenues of $2.4bn in Q4.

Sales were up 22pc to $35.7bn from $29.3bn and profits were up to $482m from $214m last year.

Amazon’s transition from pure-play e-commerce to sophisticated technology services continues.

The company added more than 1,000 new apps to the Fire TV platform and its $50 Fire tablet is the best-selling product on Amazon.com

The company’s Alexa Skills Kit and Voice Service is being adopted by companies like Ford and its integrated local search and services from Yelp, CNN and Bloomberg.

The company also announced its first Dash Replenishment devices, including products for Brother, GE, Purell and Whirlpool.

bezos-final-0404

‘Twenty years ago, I was driving the packages to the post office myself and hoping we might one day afford a forklift. This year, we pass $100 billion in annual sales and serve 300 million customers’
– JEFF BEZOS, AMAZON

Amazon also intends to compete against Netflix and traditional TV services. Worldwide Prime membership increased 51pc and Prime Video doubled the number of streaming customers.

The Prime-exclusive original series Mozart in the Jungle received two Golden Globes nominations earlier this year.

Amazon Studios also released its first original movie Chi-Raq, directed by Spike Lee.

“Twenty years ago, I was driving the packages to the post office myself and hoping we might one day afford a forklift. This year, we pass $100 billion in annual sales and serve 300 million customers,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

“And still, measured by the dynamism we see everywhere in the marketplace and by the ever-expanding opportunities we see to invent on behalf of customers, it feels every bit like day one.”

Amazon image via Shutterstock

 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com