Saturday, October 27, 2012

Amazon Reports Loss, With Soft Sales and Profit Projections


PublishersLunch

Amazon reported third quarter sales of $13.81 billion, up 27 percent from a year ago, but below analysts expectations. As forecast, they had a loss for the quarter, registering an operation loss of $28 million and a net loss of $274 million. $169 million of that loss was due to impairment charges against the unsuccessful LivingSocial investment. Guidance for the coming holiday quarter predicts a wide-ranging performance of anywhere between a loss of $490 million and profit of $310 million, and sales are forecast to grow between 16 percent and 31 percent. While those figures were lower than analysts had been projecting, after some after-market weakness last night Amazon's stock is up about 5 percent in Friday morning trading.

For those who follow the Amazon releases closely, Thursday's announcement was notable for its straight-forward nature. Gone, at least this time around, is the marginal blather about gatekeepers and lifting up some of their own exclusive self-published authors onto their own bestseller lists.
The newest quirky non-measure of Kindle device sales is to proclaim that for Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite and the basic Kindle, "we're selling more of each of these devices than the #4 bestselling product, book three of the Fifty Shades of Grey series." Which seems to be admitting that they may only be selling low tens of thousands a week of those devices.

Media sales--the segment watched by our industry--are as usual growing at a lower pace than the company overall. North American media sales of $2.215 billion were up 15 percent, and international media sales of $2.385 were up just 7 percent, even as the company continues to expand its international media offerings.

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