Despite the gains, Amazon shares immediately dropped more than 2 percent during after-hours trading before correcting and shooting up by 3 percent.
Advertisement
Amazon Web Services has been essential at increasing the company’s net worth.
For the second quarter, Amazon recorded an $857 million profit, or $1.78 a share, compared with $92 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier, as sales rose to $30.4 billion from $23.19 billion.
Seattle, Washington-based Amazon reported second-quarter profit of $857 million or $1.78 per share, up from $92 million or $0.19 per share a year ago.
Amazon Prime has an estimated 60 million members in the United States, reaches 11 countries and even has its own fake holiday.
Jeff Bezos, the chief executive and founder of Amazon, said the company’s recent expansion into India showed its continued ambition. “It was the largest June quarter profit in the company’s history, but we’re back to guiding barely any profitability”, BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said of the September quarter guidance.
This represented the fifth-straight quarter of profits for Amazon, which operated at a loss or almost even for years as it build up what is now a formidable e-commerce business.
“Revenue also jumped 31 per cent to United States dollars 30.4 billion, topping analyst estimates of USD 29.5 billion”, Forbes said.
The earnings release referenced this year’s Prime Day calling it “the biggest day ever for Amazon”. That’s up 28 percent compared to the same period past year.
Amazon itself had forecast second-quarter net sales between $28 billion and $30.5 billion and operating income of between $375 million and $975 million.
Amazon just reported its second quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday afternoon. Walmart has been expanding its $49-a-year ShippingPass unlimited delivery program and, like Amazon, is researching delivery drones to speed up shipments.
Helping prop up results was the Amazon Web Services cloud computing division, which rents computing power to other companies. Wall Street on average had targeted $31.6 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Advertisement
Sales from North America jumped 28 percent to $17.67 billion from a year ago, while worldwide sales rose 30 percent to $9.84 billion.
