Amazon (AMZN) Q4 2018 Earnings Call

Описание: Amazon Q4 profit jumps 63%, beats estimates
January 31, 2019

Amazon Inc. (AMZN) reported a 63% jump in earnings for the fourth quarter helped by higher sales and Prime holiday sales growth. The results exceeded analysts’ expectations. The eCommerce giant guided first-quarter revenue in line with the consensus view.

Net income soared 63% to $3.03 billion and earnings surged 61% to $6.04 per share. Net sales increased 20% to $72.4 billion. Excluding the $801 million unfavorable impacts from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales grew by 21%.

Looking ahead into the first quarter of 2019, the company expects net sales in the range of $56 billion to $60 billion, or to grow 10% to 18% compared with first quarter 2018. This guidance anticipates an unfavorable impact of about 210 basis points from foreign exchange rates. Operating income is expected to be $2.3 billion to $3.3 billion, compared with $1.9 billion in the first quarter of 2018.

During the holiday season, Alexa was very busy and Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally. The Echo family has experienced an increase in the devices sold during the fourth quarter compared to last year.

In 2018, Amazon improved Alexa’s ability to understand requests and answer questions by more than 20% through advances in machine learning. During the holiday season, tens of millions of customers worldwide started Prime free trials or began paid memberships.