Amazon’s Earnings ⇥ zdnet.com

Larry Dignan of ZDNet:

Amazon’s big fourth quarter wasn’t big enough relative to expectations. The e-commerce giant also delivered a first quarter outlook that disappointed.

The company reported fourth quarter earnings of $97 million, or 21 cents a share, on revenue of $21.27 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago. Wall Street analysts were expecting earnings of 28 cents a share on revenue of $22.26 billion.

That’s a 30% difference between the expected earnings per share and the actual. For comparison, Apple delivered earnings per share of $13.81, while Wall Street was expecting $13.45 per share, a difference of nearly 3% in Apple’s favour.

Similarly, the difference between Amazon’s expected and actual revenue, per above, was about 5%. Compare that against a difference of 0.4% for Apple’s expected and actual.

Apple’s stock tanked by 10%. Amazon’s is currently up in after-hours trading by 9%.