Amazon's Sales Up 38 Percent To $9.86B in Q1, Net Income Down 33 Percent

E-commerce giant Amazon just reported first quarter 2011 result, posting $9.86 billion in the first quarter, which is up 38 percent from the same quarter in 2010.

Unfortunately, Amazon’s net income decreased 33% to $201 million in the first quarter, or $0.44 per diluted share, compared with net income of $299 million, or $0.66 per diluted share, in first quarter 2010. Amazon says that excluding the $144 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 36% compared with first quarter 2010. Analysts expected 60 cents per share, on sales of $9.53 billion.

Operating cash flow increased 9% to $3.03 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $2.78 billion for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2010.

Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said this in a release: In the last 90 days, we announced Kindle with Special Offers, Kindle Library Lending, Audible audiobooks on Kindle, Appstore for Android, Amazon for Windows Phone 7, Checkout by Amazon in both Germany and the U.K., a Kindle Store in Germany, Cloud Drive, Cloud Player, and Prime Instant Video – just to call out a few of the things we’ve been working on…We love inventing on behalf of customers and have never been more excited about the long-term opportunities.

Amazon also revealed a few stats about its business (although no Kindle numbers yet). The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 900,000 books, and since the launch of the Amazon Android App store, “customers have already downloaded millions of apps from the Amazon Appstore for Android.”

North America segment sales, representing the Company’s U.S. and Canadian sites, were $5.47 billion, up 45% from first quarter 2010. International segment sales, which includes the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese and Italian sites, were $4.39 billion, up 31% from first quarter 2010. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 27%.

Worldwide Media sales grew 15% to $3.96 billion. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 13%. Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise sales grew 59% to $5.59 billion. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 57%.