Amazon raises fears with sales forecast

Amazon forecasts lower than expected sales for the first three months of the year, raising investors' fears of slowing growth.

The online giant's shares fell more than 2% in after-hours trading, despite record sales and profits for the Christmas holiday period.

Amazon expects sales growth of 10% to 18% in the first quarter, slightly lower than badysts' forecasts.

Its shares are up about 14% this year, in the hope that its rapid growth will continue.

• How Jeff Bezos Brought Amazon to the Top

In the three months to the end of the year, which included the crucial Christmas period, earnings rose 63% to $ 3 billion (£ 2.2 billion), while revenues increased by 20% to 72.4 billion dollars.

Better than badysts expected, it was still the slowest sales growth in the company since the beginning of 2015.

The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who is also the richest man in the world, has distinguished his smart speaker Alexa as being the company's best-selling device.

"Echo Dot is the best-selling product among all the Amazon products in the world and customers have bought millions of other Echo family devices compared to last year," he said. he declared.

Nicholas Hyett, an badyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the numbers showed "Amazon's ceaseless badault on High Street at Christmas".

He said the online retailer "is tightening its grip" on its customers with complementary services such as Amazon Prime, which offer free shipping and other benefits.

But he pointed out that nearly two-thirds of Amazon's profits still came from its cloud computing branch, Amazon Web Services.

"With so many opportunities, the biggest problem of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is where to focus his attention," he added.