Amazon Beat Wall Street’s Estimates in Q4 Report

On Thursday Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) reported its fourth quarter results for the period ended December 31, 2019 performing better than what Wall Street had predicted for the company in many areas.

Sales in the fourth quarter amounted to $87.4 billion, a value 21% higher compared to what the company recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018.  Wall Street’s analysts had estimated sales for to company to be $86.17 billion.

Net income in the quarter increased to $3.3 billion or earnings of $6.47 per diluted share, versus the net income of $3.0 billion or earnings of $6.04 per diluted share the company posted a similar quarter in 2018. The earnings per share were higher than the $4.11 expected by Wall Street.

The company attributed the growth in its stock to majorly the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and growth in sales. Year on year growth for the company’s AWS stood at 45% while, sales recorded a year on year growth of 34%.

As for the increase in sales the company linked it to the holiday season where customers all over the world ordered goods from the company. Amazon said the most orders goods in the quarter were devices whereby, Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote, and Echo Show 5 emerged as best-selling devices.

The international business of Amazon decreased its losses to $617 million in the fourth quarter, a value way lower than its competitors in this categories including Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT) analysts cited the narrow loss to the fact that Amazon is not exposed to China as much as Microsoft and Apple are.

Revenue Amazon generated from subscription fees in the quarter was $5.2 billion, indicating a 32% growth, the company said in the fourth quarter of 2019 more shoppers signed up for Prime than in any other quarter before.

Amazon announced it will be scaling down deliveries for Prime members to one day, a move aimed at winning over its competitor Walmart Inc. (WMT) which takes two days to deliver without subscription fees.

Additionally, Amazon said that delivery through Amazon Fresh for Prime members will now be free of charge. Initially it was $14.99 per month.