Amazon stock tumbles after earnings and AWS revenue fall short of estimates

By Christopher Zara

It’s a tough day to be Amazon.

Shares of the Seattle e-commerce giant are in a downward spiral this afternoon after it missed some key projections in its third-quarter earnings report. Earnings per share topped out at $4.23 on revenue of $70 billion, compared to analyst estimates cited by Yahoo Finance of $4.58 on revenue of $68.7 billion.

Even worse, its all-important Amazon Web Services unit posted lower-than-expected revenue at $9 billion versus estimates of $9.2 billion.

Amazon’s stock was down as much as 8.4% in after-hours trading.

Despite the miss, Amazon says sales were up 24% for the quarter, while operating cash flow rose 33% to $35.3 billion. In a note to shareholders, CEO Jeff Bezos touted Amazon Prime’s recent move to one-day shipping, an effort the company said it would spend $800 million on earlier this year.

“Customers love the transition of Prime from two days to one day—they’ve already ordered billions of items with free one-day delivery this year,” Bezos wrote. “It’s a big investment, and it’s the right long-term decision for customers.”

The company also touted its new lineup of Echo devices and said that its Alexa voice assistant is now available in more than 85,000 smart home products from over 9,500 unique brands.

You can check out the full release here. Amazon is planning an earnings call and webcast later today.

 

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