Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on June 8, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue on Thursday that sailed past analysts’ estimates. The stock climbed more than 5% in extended trading.
Here are the results:
- Earnings: $1.00 per share vs. 80 cents per share expected by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv
- Revenue: $170.0 billion vs. $166.2 billion expected by LSEG
Wall Street is also watching several other numbers in the report:
- Amazon Web Services: $24.2 billion vs. $24.2 billion, according to StreetAccount
- Advertising: $14.7 billion vs. 14.2 billion, according to StreetAccount
Amazon said first-quarter sales will be between $138 billion and $143.5 billion, representing growth of 8% to 13%. Analysts were expecting revenue of $142.1 billion, according to Refinitiv.
Amazon easily surpassed Wall Street’s expectations for earnings, indicating that CEO Andy Jassy’s efforts to rein in costs are paying off. The company has laid off 27,000 employees between late 2022 and mid-2023, and ended some of its more unproven bets. It’s continued to look for ways to cut costs in other areas, like its fulfillment business. In January, it announced cuts in Prime, MGM Studios, and Twitch, among other units.
Sales at AWS climbed 13% in the fourth quarter to $24.2 billion, in line with Wall Street’s forecast. That marks a slight uptick from the previous quarter, when sales expanded 12%, but it’s a deceleration from the year-ago period, when sales grew 20%.
For the past year, growth in AWS has slowed, as businesses trimmed their cloud spend. But Amazon executives signaled some improvement in last quarter’s earnings call, with Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky telling reporters in October that the company was “starting to see more and more new workloads come up.”
This story is developing. Check back for updates.
