Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported earnings of 52 cents per share, missing expectations of 78 cents per share, on revenues of $32.7 billion. While the 28.9% sales growth is impressive, it only came in-line with analysts’ expectations.
Shares initially fell more than 8% on the announcement, or about $65 per share (roughly $30.5 billion in market cap) before recovering about half of those losses.
This wide-range guidance for operating income next quarter probably didn’t thrill a ton of investors: “Operating income is expected to be between $0 and $1.25 billion, compared with $1.1 billion in fourth quarter 2015.”
There’s also revenue growth guidance of 17% to 27% for next quarter. I guess it depends on which side of that guidance it falls on for investors to be excited.
That said, operating cash flow and free-cash flow for the trailing 12 months were very impressive, as were sales. Web Services sales were up 55% YoY.
For a company the size of Amazon to churn out sales growth of that magnitude is so impressive. But you know what? When a stock is up as much as Amazon and has a valuation like this, each quarter needs to be lights out. When it’s not, it falls.
