PublishersLunch
Amazon continues to grow sales and produce
very little income, reporting
revenues of $13.18 million for their first quarter (up 34 percent) and net
income of $130 million (down 35 percent).
North American media sales of $2.197
billion were up 17 percent, and international media sales of $2.513 billion
rose 21 percent. The press release leads by trumpeting having persuaded authors
of 130,000 KDP titles to make their works exclusive to Amazon so that Prime
members can borrow them for free.
In the investor q&a Thursday night, cfo
Thomas Szkutak reiterated of the recent DOJ action that "we do think that
the suit is a big win for Kindle owners. And we look forward to being allowed
to lower prices on more Kindle books." An analyst tried to explore how
much the agency model has contributed to the growth in Amazon's reported
third-party sales (since the publishers became the sellers of their ebooks) but
it did not yield a very specific answer: "Certainly, the paid unit growth
[in general] has been certainly helped a lot by e-books."
For
the quarter ahead, sales are forecast to "grow between 20 percent and 34
percent" and operating income is seen ranging from a $260 million loss up
to a slim $40 million gain. Sales for the first quarter were at the high range
of their previous forecasts, and the small net income and operating figures
were above the pessimistic range that had spooked investors three months
ago--so Amazon's stock rose sharply in after-hours trading Thursday night and
is up close to 15 percent in early Friday trading
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