Amazon's stock shot up 10 percent after the bell on Thursday following a fourth-quarter earnings report that showed steady growth for the tech giant.
The bump pushed the company’s stock closer to a $1 trillion market cap.
The results reflect a year of heavy investment for the company as it expanded customer benefits like one-day delivery and sought out larger clients for its profitable cloud computing business.
All the heightened spending has led to some concern among investors, but this latest report shows that the investments could be paying off.
Net sales for the quarter were $87.4 billion, compared with $72.4 billion last year. Total net sales for the year were $281 billion, compared to $233 billion in 2018.
Earnings per share were $6.47 compared with $6.04 last year. And net income was $3.3 billion compared with $3 billion last year.
Amazon.com sales in North America represented 61 percent of net sales, with year-over-year growth of 22 percent, while the international division made up 27 percent of sales, with year over year growth of 14 percent.
North American sales pulled in $1.9 billion in income after operating expenses, while internationally the company operated at a loss of $617 million.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the tech giant's cloud computing business that has come to dominate profits in recent years, made up 12 percent of net sales, with 34 percent year over year growth. The business generated $9.9 billion in income for the quarter.
The growth rate is still the lowest for AWS since Amazon started disclosing the unit's revenue in 2015, which analysts attribute to additional investments aimed at picking up larger clients.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos noted in the release that one-day and same-day delivery, which quadrupled from the same quarter last year, have helped drive sales. He also touted the growth in Amazon Prime memberships amid growing competition from other streaming services.
"Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding — more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world," he said.
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
