Amazon Q4 beats earnings expectations, but $43.7B in revenues fall short

This afternoon ecommerce giant Amazon announced quarterly revenues of $43.74 billion and earnings of $1.54 per share. Earnings beat expectations, however, revenues were less than expected, and shares are down in after-hours trading.

Fourth quarter income was $749 million. Full-year net sales grew 27 percent to $136 billion. The company announced first-quarter guidance of $33.25 billion and $35.75 billion, which also disappointed investors.

Among the business highlights Amazon emphasized were the following:

• Tens of thousands of developers are using the Alexa Voice Service to integrate Alexa into their products, including Dish DVRs, Ford and Volkswagen vehicles, GE C Lamp, Huawei Mate 9, LG Smart Instaview fridge and Whirlpool appliances.
• Alexa-enabled devices were the top-selling products across all categories on Amazon.com this holiday season. Customers purchased and gifted a record-setting number of devices from the Amazon Echo family, with sales up over 9x compared to last holiday season.
• Third-party developers released more than 4,000 new Alexa Skills since October, including ADT, AT&T, CBS, Pizza Hut and The Wall Street Journal. Tens of thousands of developers are building skills for Alexa.

Investment research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) estimated that there are more than 8 million US homes with Amazon Echo/Alexa devices. There are also more than 7,000 skills (voice apps) to date.

Separately, Slice Intelligence reported that Amazon properties were responsible for 43 percent of US ecommerce revenue in 2016 and 53 percent of growth. Electronics, housewares and apparel were the leading growth categories. The top-selling electronics and devices were Amazon’s own.

Prime has emerged as a major revenue driver for the site. CIRP reported previously that Amazon Prime has more than 65 million US members, each spending an average of $1,200 per year, roughly 2x what non-Prime users spend.