Amazon soars on record 4th-quarter revenue

Despite some headwinds from the pandemic, Amazon charted record sales and profit in 2020 and didn’t expect a slowdown in the coming months — though the results were overshadowed by news that founder Jeff Bezos would step aside as CEO by the third quarter of this year.

Report informs citing TASS that Amazon’s fourth-quarter performance outstripped the company’s forecasts and analysts’ projections. Revenue jumped 44% from a year earlier to $125.6 billion, surpassing analysts’ average estimate of $119.7 billion. Profit more than doubled to $7.2 billion, or $14.09 a share, compared with analysts’ projections of $7.34.

Amazon spent $11.5 billion on hiring, expansion, and other costs related to COVID-19 last year — but the pandemic-driven surge in online shopping, as well as continued strength from its cloud-computing division, more than made up for those outlays, the company said Tuesday. Its 2020 sales surged 38% to $386.1 billion from a year earlier, while profit roughly doubled to $21.3 billion, or $41.83 a share.

For the first quarter of 2021, Amazon anticipates sales between $100 billion and $106 billion, up 33% to 40% compared with a year earlier, and profit of between $3 billion and $6.5 billion.