The results, of Amazon .com whose CEO is Jeff Bezos, for the last quarter was supposed to be very good like the previous three quarters of the year. The results of the previous year were also very good with actual profits and the shares reaching all-time highs.
On Thursday, however the results were disappointing from the forecast of the Analysts, and the shares fell greater than 10 % to $635.35.
The net income was $482 million for the 4th quarter ended December i.e. $1 per share. It was $214 million i.e. 45 cents per share, last year for the same period. The expectation from the Analysts polled by Yahoo was $1.56 a share.
Compared to the expected net sales’ forecast of $35.93 billion for the last quarter, actual figure was $35.75 billion, less by $200 million. This was up by 21.9% from $29.32 billion of last year. Amazon had projected the same between $33.50 to $36.75 billion.
2015 was a record year for Amazon, with record profits in the second and third quarters of 80% over the previous year. In the past it was criticized for less profits. It was overcome by deep investments into warehousing facilities, improved delivery and membership drive called Amazon Prime.
With the above results, Bezos became the 4th richest person from 15th as per FORBES’ list.
The cloud computing unit of Amazon, Amazon Web Services, had contributed to the above growth. Its net sales increased for the last quarter, from $1.42 billion in 2014 to $2.41 billion this year. Its operating income tripled to $687 million from the last three months of 2014. AWS had a customer base greater than 1 million and at $10 billion run rate as per CFO Brian Olsavsky.
Amazon’s results release, revealed selective information and not all. Its international Prime membership growth was 51% in 2015 compared to 53% of last year. It did not spell out the details of the total members. United States had 54 million members as per the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’ report, not confirmed by Amazon.
Also Amazon did not confirm the sellers’ statistics. Fulfillment, a program by Amazon, for the storage and shipping of third party sellers. It shipped more than 1 billion units in 2015.The active sellers’ service was up by 50%. FBA growth was 65% slower than in 2014.
Amazon reached, a $100 billion-year net sales, posting $107 billion in 2015. This was 20% increase from previous year. The fluctuating foreign exchange rates had pulled it down from an estimated 26%. The net income had improved from a loss of $241 million, 52 cents a diluted share in 2014 to $596 million, $1.25 per diluted share in 2015.
The net sales for the first quarter of 2016 will be between $26.5 billion and $29 billion, a growth of 17% to 28% than the previous year. The operating income was $255 million in the first quarter of 2015, whereas it will be between $100 million and $700 million, as per the company.
