LIVE: Here come Amazon's Q4 earnings

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Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, which is slated to report its fourth-quarter results Thursday afternoon.

Wall Street is expecting Amazon to report that the holidays were another happy time for the company.

Analysts have forecast that the tech giant's sales increased nearly 20% and its earnings per share (EPS) jumped nearly 50% in the fourth quarter.

Investors will likely be paying close attention to the performance of Amazon Web Services, the company's industry-leading cloud-computing business, which has been driving its earnings in recent quarters; and of Amazon's burgeoning advertising effort. They also will likely be scrutinizing how the company's growing fulfillment and free shipping-related costs affected the profitability of its retail business.

Read this: Why Amazon Prime may not be such a good thing for the company anymore

Here's what Wall Street is expecting and how it compares with Amazon's prior-year results:

• Fourth-quarter (Q4) revenue: $71.92 billion. In the same period of 2017, Amazon posted sales of $60.45 billion.
• Q4 EPS: $5.55. In the fourth-quarter a year earlier, the company earned $3.75 a share.
• First-quarter (Q1) revenue: $60.99 billion. In the first quarter last year, Amazon saw sales of $51.04 billion.
• Q1 EPS: $4.43. In the same period of 2018, the company earned $3.27 a share.

In late afternoon trading, Amazon's shares were up $41.96, or 2.5%, to $1,712.39.