Amazon and Profits-Nice

 

01 30 2009

 

SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) -- Finally some good news, brought to you by Jeff Bezos and the gang at Amazon.com.

In a week when company after company announced horrible earnings and pulled the plug on tens of thousands of jobs, Amazon's fourth-quarter net profit rose 9 percent, to $225 million, or 52 cents a share, in the quarter ending December 31. Overall revenue jumped 18% (the Street was looking for 13%).

Those are good numbers by any measure, but in the context of total online retail sales down 3% over the holidays, according to ComScore, and overall retail down 5% during the same period, according to the Commerce Department - they're stunning.

A big part of the story for Amazon appears to be international growth. While net sales for categories like media (books, DVDs and the like) in the U.S. slowed to a 7% rise versus 31% a year ago, international was on fire.

Excluding the effects of exchange rates, Amazon's fourth-quarter net sales from sites in the U.K., Germany, Japan, France and China climbed 31%, slightly down compared to the 35% growth during the same period last year.

"But based on everything we know about the global economy," says Thomas Weisel Partners retail analyst Matt Nemer, "That is downright shocking."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/30/magazines/fortune/investing/investor_daily.fortune/

 

[Nice to see that private enterprise works…without government bailout money.]

 

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