Amazon Reports 4th Quarter Earnings Decline

(NewsCore) - Amazon.com reported a sharp decline in earnings for the fourth quarter, as the company continued to spend heavily on its infrastructure and new products such as the Kindle Fire tablet.

The online retail giant saw its shares fall more than nine percent in after-hours trading following the report, as its sales figure came in surprisingly below Wall Street's estimates. The company also issued a revenue forecast for the current period that was below analysts' expectations.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Amazon reported net income of $177 million, or 38 cents a share, compared to net income of $416 million, or 91 cents a share, for the same period the previous year.

Revenue jumped 35 percent to $17.4 billion.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 17 cents a share on revenue of $18.3 billion, according to consensus estimates from FactSet Research.

The company did not give specific sales figures for its Kindle devices, following past practices. In its statement after the bell, it did say that Kindle device sales were up 177 percent during the nine-week holiday period compared to the previous year.

The company said operating income for the quarter was $260 million, with an operating margin of 1.5 percent. This was slightly above the range that Amazon forecast in its last earnings report.

Amazon said it expects revenue to come in the range of $12 billion to $13.4 billion. Analysts were expecting revenue of $13.4 billion for the period. Operating results are expected to come in between a loss of $200 million and operating income of $100 million.