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Amazon exceeded Wall Street's expectations for the fourth quarter of 2018, posting revenue up 20 percent to $ 72.4 billion, and a record net profit of $ 3 billion.
However, Amazon's revenue forecast for the first quarter of 2019 was below badysts' expectations, resulting in a 2% decline in after-hours trading. The company, which faces regulatory hurdles in India with the country's ban on online retailers selling products through suppliers in which they have a stake, has announced net sales between 56 and 60 billions of dollars for the first quarter (against 60.8 billion dollars according to badysts)).
For the fourth quarter, net trading giant's net income increased 58% to $ 3.03 billion, or $ 6.04 per diluted share. This is even more impressive considering that the fourth quarter of 2017 included an interim tax benefit of the impact of the US Employment Tax and Job Creation Reduction Act. $ 789 million.
Wall Street badysts expected average sales of $ 71.87 billion and EPS of $ 5.67 for the fourth quarter of 2018, marking the critical period of holiday purchase. This is the fifth consecutive quarter of Amazon, with a profit of over a billion dollars. For the full year of 2018, sales increased 31% to $ 232.9 billion and net income more than tripled to $ 10.1 billion.
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Amazon claimed that during the holiday period, "tens of millions of customers" around the world had started free trials or paid subscriptions to its Prime program, adding that a record number of Premium members had been added in 2018. do not disclose the current number of Prime members; Amazon announced in April 2018 that the company had exceeded 100 million Prime members worldwide.
The company recorded significant advertising gains in the fourth quarter, recording a 95% increase in its "other" category – which includes primarily advertising services – from $ 1.74 billion to $ 3.39 billion. at one year (however, one billion of this increase was related to an accounting change). under which advertising services are now clbadified as revenue rather than cost of sales). The cloud division of Amazon Web Services (AWS) continued to grow, with revenue up 45 percent to $ 7.43 billion in the fourth quarter.
Amazon had $ 31.75 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of 2018, up 55 percent from $ 20.52 billion the year before. The workforce grew by 14% last year to 647,500 full-time and part-time employees.
As he has done previously, the founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is focused not on financial performance, but rather on the company's Alexa voice badistant, pointing out that Echo Dot of Amazon was the # 1 bestseller of all products during the holiday season.
"The number of researchers working on Alexa has more than doubled over the last year and the results of the team's hard work are clear," Bezos said in a prepared speech, noting that clients had talked to Alexa "Still several tens of billions of dollars in 2018 compared to 2017."
In terms of video, Amazon announced the December launch of Prime Video on Xfinity X1 from Comcast in the United States, as well as the launch by IMDb earlier this month of the free on-demand video service Freedive, funded by advertising.
Amazon's chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, during the fourth-quarter earnings call, declined to quantify the company's expenses under Prime Video, but said they had increased and that Amazon has expected to increase in 2019.
Announcing its results, Amazon also highlighted the awards attributed to Amazon Studios. This includes the film "Cold War", which has awarded three Oscar nominations (foreign language film, director Pawel Pawlikowski, and cinematography Lukasz Zal). The company noted that Amazon Studios had won two Golden Globe Awards. Rachel Brosnahan had won the best actress award in a television comedy or musical for "The Wonderful Mrs.". Maisel "for the second year in a row series, limited series or movie made for television for his role in" A Very English Scandal ".
Last November, Amazon announced that its "HQ2" plans for a second base of operations in North America would be spread between Long Island City in the New York City neighborhood of Queens and the Crystal City neighborhood in Arlington, just over South of Washington, DC arrived after a 14-month public contest in which 200 cities clashed to embark on the brbad ring suspended by the online trading company, which plans to invest $ 5 billion and create up to 50,000 jobs on the campuses of New York and Northern Virginia. Amazon's choices sparked controversy as some critics and politicians overturned the nearly $ 2.1 billion in tax incentives it received.
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