Amazon scores stellar Q4, fueled by 45% cloud-biz growth

31 Jan Amazon scores stellar Q4, fueled by 45% cloud-biz growth

Amazon reported strong Q4 2018 revenues in all parts of its business on Thursday afternoon. Its cloud services business grew 45% over the last quarter of 2017. The only negative in the report was a lower-than-expected guidance number for the March-ending quarter.

Here are the top lines:

• Total Q4 revenue. $72.4 billion.
• Total 2018 revenue. $232.9 billion (crossed the $200 billion threshold for the first time).
• AWS revenue. $7.43 billion.
• Echo devices. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said his company’s smart speaker business had a big holiday quarter. “Alexa was very busy during her holiday season. Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally, and customers purchased millions more devices from the Echo family compared to last year,” he said in a statement.
• Q1 forecast. Revenue between $56 billion and $60 billion. Amazon says its revenues will be hindered somewhat by the strong U.S. dollar.
• Stock. Jumped 3% in after-hours trading on the earnings report.
• Market capitalization. Grew to $840 billion Thursday afternoon, more than Microsoft, Apple, or any other publicly traded company.

Time it took to reach US$200 billion in annual revenue:

Exxon Mobil: 128 years
Toyota: 69 years
Apple: 39 years
Walmart: 36 years
Amazon: 24 years

(numbers are inflation adjusted) https://t.co/5TrRWpxCef

— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) January 31, 2019

Source: Fast Company