Amazon Posts Strong Fourth Quarter Results

Bucking global trends of layoffs, losses, and downsizing, online retailer Amazon posted a $225 million quarterly profit...an an upbeat forecast.

The global economic downturn may have companies in the United States and around the world laying off workers, shutting down facilities, restructuring their businesses, and filing for bankruptcy protection. However, online retailer Amazon.com is bucking the trend, posting strong results for its fourth quarter of 2008 and issuing an optimistic forecast for 2009 earnings. Amazon posted a profit of $225 million for the fourth quarter of 2008 on net sales of $6.7 billion. The profit represents an 8.7 percent increase from the same quarter in 2007, while the revenue increase represents an 18 percent year-on-year jump.

“We remain relentlessly focused on serving customers with low prices, great selection, and free shipping offers, including Amazon Prime,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We’re particularly grateful for the unusually strong demand for Kindle in the fourth quarter.”

The news put to rest skepticism about the Amazon’s holiday sales; Amazon had previously touted the holiday season as its best ever, but didn’t give any sales figures. Some industry watchers had speculated that while Amazon may have had high sales volume, that may not have translated to significant earnings due to the unusually aggressive price-slashing and discounting this past holiday season.

Despite the economic downturn, Amazon expects net sales for its first quarter of 2009 to be between $4.525 and $4.925 billion, which would be an increase of anywhere from 9 to 19 percent of revenues from the first quarter of 2008.