Amazon soars after huge earnings beat

Shares of Amazon climbed as much as 13.3% in after-hours trading on Thursday after smashing earnings expectations for the fourth quarter.

The company’s market cap surged above $1 trillion after hours on the back of the powerhouse earnings report. In doing so, it joins Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft, which have all crossed the trillion-dollar threshold. 

Here are the key numbers:

• Earnings per share: $6.47 per share vs. expectations of $4.03 per share, according to analysts surveyed by Refinitiv
• Revenue: $87.44 billion vs. expectations of $86.02 billion, per Refinitiv
• Amazon Web Services: $9.95 billion vs. expectations of $9.81 billion, according to FactSet

The company also gave upbeat guidance for the first quarter, saying it now expects to report revenue between $69 billion and $73 billion.

In the earnings release, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said “more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before” and that the company now counts more than 150 million paid Prime members around the world. Amazon last gave an update on Prime subscribers in April 2018, saying it had more than 100 million members in the program. 

Amazon’s “other” category, which is primarily made up of its advertising business, generated $4.8 billion in revenue during the quarter, which is a 41% increase from the year-ago period. 

As expected, Amazon’s worldwide shipping costs increased significantly during the quarter, climbing 43% year over year to $12.9 billion. The company has been spending heavily to speed up deliveries, building out its one-day and same-day delivery services over the past several months. 

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