Amazon.com Inc. Thursday posted a quarterly profit below Wall Street forecasts and the Web’s largest retailer vowed to continue free shipping incentives, then watched its shares fall sharply after hours.
“While free shipping is expensive for the company, it saves our customers tens of millions of dollars each quarter, and we plan to keep it in place indefinitely,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a prepared statement. Free shipping and price discounts fueled a 26 percent jump in sales at Amazon.
The Seattle-based company reported second-quarter net income of $76 million, or 18 cents per share, compared with a year-earlier net loss of $43 million, or 11 cents per share. That was a penny short of Wall Street analysts’ consensus forecast for a profit of 19 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates.
Amazon, which began life as a bookseller but now offers a vast array of consumer goods online with various merchant partners, posted revenue of $1.39 billion, within its target range of $1.34 billion to $1.44 billion.
International sales grew 50 percent to $595 million in the quarter from a year ago, or 38 percent excluding beneficial swings in foreign exchange rates.
Amazon projected third-quarter revenues would rise to between $1.425 billion and $1.525 billion from $1.134 billion in the same period a year ago. Analysts were forecasting $1.45 billion in revenues, according to Reuters Estimates.
