Amazon’s Stock Price Stumbles After Hours On Revenue, Earnings Miss And Weak Guidance

Today after the market close Amazon reported its fourth quarter financial performance, including revenue of $25.59 billion, and earnings per share of $0.51. The company has operating income of $510 million in the period, up 26 percent year over year.

The street had expected Amazon to report revenue of $26.06 billion, and earn $0.66 per share. Put another way, in a quarter of strong GDP growth, Amazon managed to miss expectations on both its top and bottom lines.

In regular trading, Amazon was up a very strong 5 percent. In after-hours trading, Amazon is down sharply, nearly 8 percent. Amazon’s expected earnings-per-share growth was more than 200 percent, for reference.

Despite the disappointing earnings, the company was upbeat: “It’s a good time to be an Amazon customer,” said founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on the earnings call.

In the sequentially preceding quarter, for context, Amazon reported net sales of $17.09 billion, and an earnings-per-share loss of $0.09. That was the company’s second sequential loss. The gap between the company’s third and fourth quarter revenue is due to the holiday shopping period, a cyclically strong period for Amazon.

In its year-ago quarter, Amazon had earnings per share of $0.21.

For its calendar 2013, Amazon had revenue of $74.45 billion, up 22 percent year over year. Its operating income rose 10 percent in the same period to $745 million. Amazon ended the year with cash and equivalents of $8.6 billion.

That Amazon was up in regular trading to more than $400 a share was perhaps due to Facebook’s stronger-than-expected earnings yesterday, which bolstered the social giant. Twitter was up a firm 8 percent today as well, riding the same winds. Now that we have the numbers, it appears those optimistic expectations were misplaced.

For the coming quarter, Amazon expects to generate revenue between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion, up 13 percent year over year.

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