Amazon on Thursday posted better-than-expected first-quarter results, but a cautious outlook sent the share price of the US online retail giant lower in after-hours trading.
The Seattle, Washington-based Amazon reported a net profit of US$299 million, or US$0.66 per share, compared with US$177 million, or US$0.41 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Amazon said sales increased 46 percent to US$7.13 billion, better than the US$6.87 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.
The earnings per share of US$0.66 were also better than the forecast of US$0.61.
The company said it expects sales of US$6.1 billion to US$6.7 billion in the second quarter, which would be 31 percent to 44 percent better than the same quarter a year earlier.
While Amazon may have beat analysts’ expectations and hit an all-time record high on Wall Street on Thursday, investors appeared unimpressed — Amazon was down 6.52 percent at US$140.31 in after-hours electronic trading.
“Even in this bull market, stocks hitting new all-time highs have to do even better than great,” analyst Jon Ogg of 247WallSt.com said.
Amazon said North America sales climbed 47 percent to US$3.78 billion in the quarter, while international sales from Amazon sites in Britain, China, France, Germany and Japan surged 45 percent to US$3.35 billion.
The company said that media sales, representing books, music, film DVDs, video games and other items, grew 26 percent to US$3.43 billion.
Sales of electronics and general merchandise grew 72 percent to US$3.51 billion, the company said, the first time that the category, boosted by the recent acquisition of online shoe store Zappos, surpassed the media segment.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the electronic book reader the Kindle remains Amazon’s “number one best-selling product,” but the company continued its practice of declining to provide sales figures for the device.
Bezos said the number of titles available for the Kindle had reached 500,000.
US retail giant Target announced Wednesday that it would begin selling the Kindle this month, making it the first store to offer the e-reader Amazon has previously sold only through its Web site.
The move comes nearly three weeks after Apple’s iPad, seen as a potential rival to the Kindle, hit stores in the US. The basic Kindle is US$259 while the cheapest iPad is US$499.
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