Amazon reported fourth-quarter earnings slightly below Wall Street estimates even as sales surged and it reported the fastest growth in its prominent cloud computing business in 13 quarters.
The Seattle-based online behemoth on Thursday reported net income of $21.2 billion, or $1.95 per share, for the three-month period ended Dec. 31. That compares with $20 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Revenue rose 14% to $213.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $187.8 billion in the year-ago period.
Analysts were expecting $1.97 per share on sales of $211.4 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue from its cloud service arm called Amazon Web Services increased 24% to $35.6 billion. Analysts were expecting $34.9 billion.
Amazon said it plans to increase capital spending to $200 billion this year from $125 billion as it sees opportunities in artificial intelligence, robots, semiconductors and satellites, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a press release. Wall Street analysts were expecting spending to rise to around $147 billion, according to FactSet.
Amazon abuses employees, destroys the environment, attacks unions, kills local businesses, sells fake crap, spies on us, supports a violent fascist US regime that threatens to invade my country, and is causally responsible for that godawful stunt where Katy Perry spent 2 minutes in space then made us all stupider with the dumbest interview in the history of dumb interviews. Any one of these is a great reason not to shop with them.
Agreed