Amazon reported fourth-quarter earnings slightly below Wall Street estimates even as sales surged and it reported the fastest growth in its prominent cloud computing business in 13 quarters.
The Seattle-based online behemoth on Thursday reported net income of $21.2 billion, or $1.95 per share, for the three-month period ended Dec. 31. That compares with $20 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Revenue rose 14% to $213.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $187.8 billion in the year-ago period.
Analysts were expecting $1.97 per share on sales of $211.4 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue from its cloud service arm called Amazon Web Services increased 24% to $35.6 billion. Analysts were expecting $34.9 billion.
Amazon said it plans to increase capital spending to $200 billion this year from $125 billion as it sees opportunities in artificial intelligence, robots, semiconductors and satellites, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a press release. Wall Street analysts were expecting spending to rise to around $147 billion, according to FactSet.



AWS is one thing, but I can understand why profits would be falling on their storefront. Cheap garbage and fake reviews all over the fucking place. Walmart is somehow the lesser of two evils.
AWS is the real money maker for Amazon, making up most of their revenue.
I would think a lot of the world is trying to get away from American companies right now.
Amazon abuses employees, destroys the environment, attacks unions, kills local businesses, sells fake crap, spies on us, supports a violent fascist US regime that threatens to invade my country, and is causally responsible for that godawful stunt where Katy Perry spent 2 minutes in space then made us all stupider with the dumbest interview in the history of dumb interviews. Any one of these is a great reason not to shop with them.
Agreed