SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) Thursday reported a fourth-quarter profit that surged from a year ago, driven largely by revenue growth as consumers continue to shop more on the e-commerce platform, especially over the holiday shopping season, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The online retail giant's earnings and revenues trumped Wall Street estimates.
Amazon also said its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will step down from his role and transition to executive chair of the company as of the third quarter. Andy Jassy, who currently leads Amazon Web Services, is set to take over reins of the company.
Seattle, Washington-based Amazon's fourth-quarter surged to $7.22 billion or $14.09 per share from $3.27 billion or $6.47 per share last year. On average, 40 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $7.23 per share for the quarter.
Amazon's sales for the quarter jumped 44% to $125.55 billion from $87.44 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $119.70 billion for the quarter.
Sales from North America jumped 40 percent to $75.35 billion from $53.67 billion last year, while international sales rose 57 percent to $37.47 billion from $23.81 billion. Meanwhile, revenues of Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud service division, jumped 28 percent to $12.74 billion from $9.95 billion.
Looking forward to the first quarter, the company expects sales of $100 billion to $106 billion. Analysts currently estimate revenues of $95.69 billion.
AMZN is currently trading at $3,380.00, up $37.12 or 1.11%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further gained $11.10 or 0.33% in the after-hours trade.
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