Amazon beat out expectations for fourth quarter of 2017, and pet pushing forward. The company grew its Amazon Web Services business, and said that it sold “tens of millions” of Echo devices last year. Of course, we don’t know the exact numbers of how many Echos the company sold, but knowing that it sold “tens of millions” tells us that there’s definitely a big market for smart speakers, and Amazon is tapping into it fulls peed.
Amazon announced its fourth quarter earnings today. Wall Street was expecting high numbers from Amazon because of strong performance last year during Black Friday and Cyber Monday holidays, both in online and offline sales. Amazon posted Q4 revenue of $60.45 billion marking a 38.2 percent increase from the previous quarter’s reported revenue of $43.7 billion. The company announced a net income of $1.86 billion (earnings per share of $3.75).
Speaking in terms of physical store, including Whole Foods and Amazon bookstores, they brought in $4.5 billion in revenue. The company’s Amazon Web Services platform continues to grow, hitting $5.11 billion in revenue and exceeding analyst estimates of $5 billion.
Amazon may have posted some strong financials, the company is still spending quite a lot, which is also its strategy for continued expansion. Free cash flow decreased from $10.5 billion in 2016 to $84 billion in 2017.
Amazon’s overall operating income in 2017 was down 2 percent to $4.1 billion as compared to $4.2 billion year over year. Amazon Web Services’ operating income grew 46 percent year over year, to $1.4 billion, so AWS contributed the most in Amazon’s operating income in the fourth quarter.
