Humberto Manzano Jr. delivers a pallet of goods at an Amazon.com fulfillment center in Phoenix in this file photo.(Photo: Ross D. Franklin AP)
NEW YORK (AP) - Amazon's stock fell Thursday after the world's largest
online retailer reported third-quarter results below Wall Street's
expectations, including a large loss related to its stake in online
deals service LivingSocial.
Amazon.com (AMZN) posted a loss of
$274 million, or 60 cents per share, in the July-September period.
That's down from earnings of $63 million, or 14 cents per share, a year
earlier.
The latest quarter's results include a loss of 37 cents
per share related to Amazon's stake in LivingSocial. Without the charge,
it still would have lost 23 cents per share, worse than analysts
expected.
Revenue grew 27% to $13.81 billion, from $10.88 billion, also falling short of analysts' expectations.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet, on average, were expecting a loss of 7 cents a share on revenue of $13.91 billion.
Amazon said its $199 Kindle Fire HD tablet is its best-selling product worldwide, but as usual, it did not give sales figures.
"Our
approach is to work hard to charge less. Sell devices near breakeven
and you can pack a lot of sophisticated hardware into a very low price
point," founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said.
Amazon has a larger version of the Kindle Fire HD out next month.
Amazon's
results come two days after Apple introduced a smaller iPad, the Mini,
for $329. In its press release announcing the results, Amazon included a
list trumpeting its high-definition Kindle Fire as cheaper than the
iPad Mini and with more features. However, Apple's iPad has a much wider
selection of third-party apps.
At one point, Amazon's stock was
off $6.42, or 2.9%, to $216.50 in after-hours trading before recovering
some of that loss. The stock had closed down $5.57, or 2.4%, at $222.92
in the regular trading session.
USA Today