On Thursday, the company reported second quarter earnings, which hit expectations for net revenue growth but missed wide on expected losses, sending the stock down more than 9.5% in after-hours trading. In a year when the company launched a set-top box, an all-you-can-read e-book service and a smartphone, which will begin shipping on Friday, the Seattle online retailer continued to show a disregard for its bottom line in favor of research and expansion.
Amazon reported a second quarter net loss of $126 million, or 27 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $7 million, or two cents a share, in the same period a year last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected losses for the company to come in at about 15 cents a share. Operating expenses for the quarter stood at $19.36 billion.
Net sales were reported to be $19.34 billion, up 23% from 2013's second quarter figure of $15.7 billion. That figure fell in line with estimates polled by Thomson Reuters and settled in the range of the company's earlier forecasts for net sales between $18.1 billion and $19.8 billion.
Those numbers did not impress investors as the company's stock price, which was already down more than 7% in the last six months prior to today's earnings report, fell more than 9.5% in after-hours trading. No one was affected more than Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who kept with past tradition and skipped out on his company's earnings call, leaving Amazon Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak to handle proceedings.
As of share prices at 5:40 pm in New York, the stock dip had cut out about $3 billion from his personal net worth after markets closed on Thursday. Based on those prices, Forbes now estimates Bezos to be worth about $29.8 billion and he's still among the 25 richest people in the world.
As with past quarterly reports, the company did not break out specific numbers for particular segments of their business, including the lucrative Amazon Web Services.
"AWS continues to grow very strongly," said Szkutak after suggesting that financial numbers had slowed because of price reductions. "Usage growth in Q2 was close to 90% year-over-year for the quarter."
Amazon expects continued net sales growth next quarter, forecasting figures to fall between $19.7 billion and $21.5 billion, which could amount to 15% to 26% in growth over the previous year. It also predicts much greater losses to come, with operating losses expected to fall between $810 million to $410 million, compared to the $25 million loss in the third quarter of 2013.
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