Jeff Bezos and crew at Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) are out with fourth quarter earnings for the online seller of everything. Wall Street has not penalized the company for operating on extremely low margins or negative margins, but at some point this should be an issue. That point may be now.
Earnings came in $0.51 in earnings per share and revenues came up 20% to $25.59 billion. Thomson Reuters had estimates of $0.66 per share and $26.06 billion in revenue. Amazon’s operating margin was only 2% during the fourth quarter.
Amazon is targeting first quarter results to have an operating loss of $200 million to a gain of $200 million. That could translate to -$0.42 to a gain of $0.42 per share if you use straight math. Sales are being put at $18.2 billion to $19.9 billion. Thomson Reuters had estimates of 0.54 in earnings on revenue of $19.67 billion.
Amazon shares closed up 4.9% at $403.01 going into earnings, but the stock was down 7.8% around $372 in the after-hours reaction.
Amazon trades at a crazy P/E ratio, and its margins have been allowed to operate at close to zero for long enough. Maybe investors are finally deciding that a company that takes over retail segments and crushes brick and mortar rivals needs to do so with clear profitability rather than at a non-profit status.
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