Here's Why Amazon's Stock Is Going Nuts
The stock is still up ~11.77% pre-market.
What has investors so excited?
Amazon turned a profit!
The company reported earnings per share of $0.45, which was a beat on expectations and a big improvement from the $0.95 loss last quarter.
The company's gross margin (Amazon's profits excluding the cost of sales) rose to 29.5% from 26.5% from the same period last year, on net sales of $29.33 billion.
Another factor in the stock spike was Amazon's announcement that it plans to start breaking out the financials of its cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services, next quarter. CEO Jeff Bezos has said that he expects the AWS businesses to be one of the biggest contributors to its business, and investors look forward to seeing exactly how big it's grown.
Although Amazon didn't list revenues for AWS yet (it's in the "other" category, which accounts for about 9% of North American sales, growing year over year), the company said on its call that AWS has over 1 million active customers and that it saw usage grow 90% year over year.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- 9 health benefits of drinking sugarcane juice in summer
- 10 benefits of incorporating almond oil into your daily diet
- From heart health to detoxification: 10 reasons to eat beetroot
- Why did a NASA spacecraft suddenly start talking gibberish after more than 45 years of operation? What fixed it?
- ICICI Bank shares climb nearly 5% after Q4 earnings; mcap soars by ₹36,555.4 crore