Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) 3Q17 earnings were released after closing bell tonight, and the company posted earnings of 52 cents per share on $43.7 billion in revenue. Analysts had been expecting a breakeven result on $41.74 billion in revenue, while the company had guided for sales to come in between $39.25 billion and $41.12 billion. In the year-ago quarter, Amazon posted 52 cents per share in earnings on $32.71 billion in sales.
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Amazon 3Q17 earnings
Amazon said net product sales rose to $28.8 billion, while service sales rose to $15 billion. Amazon Web Services revenues rose to $4.6 billion from $3.2 billion last year, while North America Retail sales grew to $25.4 billion from $18.9 billion last year. International Retail sales grew to $13.7 billion from $10.6 billion a year ago.
Amazon said its total net sales included $1.3 billion from Whole Foods Market; that acquisition closed on Aug. 28. Excluding Whole Foods and a currency benefit from currency change rates over the last year, Amazon’s net sales rose 29% year over year.
Among other things, Amazon management highlighted the growth in their Alexa digital assistant.
In the last month alone, we’ve launched five new Alexa-enabled devices, introduced Alexa in India, announced integration with BMW, surpassed 25,000 skills, integrated Alexa with Sonos speakers, taught Alexa to distinguish between two voices, and more,” Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement with the Amazon 3Q17 earnings release. “Because Alexa’s brain is in the AWS cloud, her new abilities are available to all Echo customers, not just those who buy a new device. ”
According to Bezos, Amazon has sold tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices and given more than 100,000 five-star reviews to their Echo devices. Alexa’s active user base has grown by more than five times over the las 12 months.
Amazon issues guidance
For the fourth quarter, Amazon expects net sales to be between $56 billion and $60 billion, marking a 28% to 38% increase year over year. The outlook includes about 1,000 basis points of growth impact from the Whole Foods Market acquisition.
