Dive Brief:
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Amazon Thursday released higher-than-expected Q4 net income, to the surprise of many analysts and the delight of Wall Street. Shares rose as much as 14% on the news.
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The company's full year report was more in line with expectations, with a loss of $241 million for the fiscal year and a report that operating expenses rose 20% to $88.8 billion, which took a hit to its $89 billion in sales.
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Earlier this week, the company announced a new corporate email service it’s dubbed WorkMail.
Dive Insight:
Amazon is usually a company that pleases investors with its potential rather than its profit, but this quarter breaks that habit. For the first time the company also said that in its April report it would break out profits from its Amazon Web Services business, an IT services unit, something many analysts said would give a cleaner picture of things considering that it’s a significant business.
In any case, Amazon may credit this profit bump to a surge of third-party retail in its marketplace and its massive Prime membership following, where members pay nearly three times on average what non-members do each year. If it can rein in its spending further, staying away from boondoggles like its Fire phone disaster, sales could benefit and this kind of report may become less of a surprise.