Amazon's Holiday Quarter Results Trounce Wall Street, Shares Surge 12%

(RTTNews) - Shares of Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) surged 12% on extended trading session Thursday after the online retail giant's holiday season quarter results trumped analysts estimates.

Seattle, Washington-based Amazon reported fourth-quarter profit of $3.27 billion or $6.47 per share, up from $3.03 billion or $6.04 per share last year. On average, 44 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $4.03 per share for the quarter.

Amazon's sales for the quarter jumped 21 percent to $87.44 billion from $72.38 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $86.02 billion for the quarter.

Sales from North America jumped 22 percent to $53.67 billion from $44.12 billion last year, while international sales rose 14 percent to $23.81 billion from $20.83 billion. Meanwhile, revenues of Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud service division, jumped 34 percent to $9.95 billion.

Total operating expenses for the quarter rose to $83.56 billion from $68.60 billion last year.

"Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding — more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world," said CEO Jeff Bezos.

Looking forward to the first quarter, the company expects sales of $69.0 billion to $73.0 billion. Analysts currently estimate revenues of $71.64 billion.

AMZN closed Thursday's trading at $1,870.68, up $12.68 or 0.68%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further gained $207.32 or 11.08% in the after-hours trade.