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Amazon Stock Plummets After Mixed Earnings Report And Weak Forecast, AWS Falls Short

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In late trading on Thursday, Amazon AMZN +7.38%.com shares went down after the company reported mixed results for the fourth quarter. This was due to the continued pressures from a weakening economy.

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The company's fourth-quarter sales growth was better than expected, but the company's profits were lower than expected, mostly because of a loss on its stake in Rivian Automotive, which makes electric trucks. (ticker: RIVN)

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Amazon Web Services, a part of the company that is closely watched, didn't make as much money as expected. The company's revenue forecast for the first quarter was much lower than what most people thought it would be.

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After hours trading for Amazon (AMZN) fell by about 3.5% after the report came out.

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Amazon's quarterly revenues of $149.2 billion, up 9%, exceeded the company's target range of $140 billion to $148 billion and the Wall Street consensus forecast of $145.9 billion. The corporation reported 12% growth without $5 billion in negative foreign exchange rates.

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The operating income was $2.7 billion, which was exactly what Wall Street had predicted. The company's net income was $300 million, or 3 cents per share. This included a noncash loss of $2.3 billion before taxes on the value of its stake in Rivian.

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For the whole year, sales were $514 billion, which is up 9% or 13% when currency is taken into account. Amazon lost $2.7 billion over the course of the year, $12.7 billion of which was due to its position in Rivian shares.

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Amazon Web Services' fourth-quarter revenue was $21.4 billion, up 20%, missing the Wall Street forecast of $21.8 billion and slowing from 27% growth in September. As corporations tighten their belts in a tougher economy, Microsoft MSFT +4.69%'s Azure cloud business has also slowed.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made a surprise appearance on Amazon's earnings call Thursday afternoon, remarking that this was his first full year in the post. He described AWS's present business conditions, which he helped construct from scratch before succeeding Jeff Bezos as CEO.

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“Most firms right now are acting cautiously,” Jassy added. He claimed AWS will help clients save on cloud services. “We are attempting to develop a set of relationships that will outlast all of us,” he stated, rather than focused on short-term financial performance.

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But he also said that Amazon thinks 90% to 95% of all IT spending is still on-premises and that most of that will move to the cloud in the next 10 to 15 years, giving AWS a lot of room to grow.

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Online store sales fell 2% to $64.5 billion in the fourth quarter, missing analyst expectations. Third-party seller services revenue rose 20% to $36.3 million. Subscription services sales increased 13% and physical retail income increased 6%. Advertising revenue rose 19% to $11.6 billion, exceeding Wall Street's $11.4 billion projection.

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Amazon expects first-quarter revenue of $121 billion to $126 billion, up 4% to 8%. Wall Street expects $139.2 billion. Amazon expects quarterly operating income between zero and $4 billion, while Wall Street expects $4.2 billion.

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“In the short term, we face an uncertain economy, but we remain pretty enthusiastic about the long-term potential for Amazon,” Jassy said. “We're delighted by the continuous progress we're making in decreasing our cost to service in the operations part of our retail business,” he said.

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Early in January, Amazon said it was going to cut just over 18,000 jobs as part of its efforts to cut costs in a weaker economy.

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When announcing the Amazon staff cuts last month, CEO Andy Jassy said, “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure; however, I'm also optimistic that we'll be inventive, resourceful, and scrappy in this time when we're not hiring expansively and eliminating some roles.”

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