Amazon.com, Inc. Posts Record Loss In Q3, Shares Tumble

[aspkin]

Not eBay News but close enough...

-----

Amazon.com, Inc. fell short of Wall Street’s expectations for its third quarter, posting net sales of $20.58 billion and a net loss of $437 million, or 95 cents per share. Analysts were on average expecting a loss of 74 cents per share on revenue of $20.84 billion.

It was the largest quarterly loss in the company’s history, and sparked investor concerns that the highly diversified e-commerce giant is overstretched as it move into niche markets like same-day grocery delivery.

To boot, Amazon released fourth-quarter sales and earnings projections that also missed analysts’ predictions. The online retailer’s shares were off more than 11 percent in after-hours trading Thursday.

Amazon’s revenues were up 20 percent for the period, but it wasn’t enough to offset significant spending increases that CEO Jeff Bezos hopes will pay off in the future. Analysts worry that, by entering new markets like mobile hardware and data hosting, the company is stretching itself too thin.

“This is a hard one to swallow,” Lou Basenese, founder of Disruptive Tech Research, told CNBC. “This is going to make it tough to justify that we’re investing in the future.” Needham & Co.‘s Kerry Rice said the outlook for Amazon is “a little ho hum as we get into Christmas,” according to Bloomberg.

In recent quarters, Amazon launched the Kindle Voyage, Fire phone (sales of which have been weak), its Fire TV service, and in September acquired streaming-games specialist Twitch for $970 million. It has also announced plans to open a brick-and-mortar store on some of the world’s most expensive commercial real estate—across the street from Manhattan’s Empire State Building.

Bezos is undaunted as the company heads into the final quarter. “As we get ready for this upcoming holiday season, we are focused on making the customer experience easier and more stress-free than ever,” said Bezos, in a statement.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc. Posts Record Loss In Q3, Shares Tumble

[yankee]

How does this compare to ebay?

[aspkin]

Well.. eBay is making profit where Amazon keeps losing money due to aggressive expansion.

EBay Inc. Reports Lukewarm Q3 Earnings: Revenue Misses, But EPS Beats Estimates

[Dmshark25]

And there are no more categories left to sell on, every time I log in another category is closed, there is not much your left to sell

I'm sure that had to be part of the reason sales were down, they cut off many sellers completely and didn't make up,those sales anywhere else

[yankee]

Originally Posted by Dmshark25

And there are no more categories left to sell on, every time I log in another category is closed, there is not much your left to sell

I'm sure that had to be part of the reason sales were down, they cut off many sellers completely and didn't make up,those sales anywhere else

I can not sell the most popular items in my very small nitch category. Amazon is an exclusive for a single UPC code, lol

[jeffweico]

I'm sure Amazon is not going out of business, but they really DO need to start showing a consistent PROFIT. Investing for the future only goes so far - investors want to know what the game plan is - WHEN will they be profitable? Because Amazon has been doing this since their inception to one degree or another.

I kind of sensed trouble when their new phone sales were poor and they were offering Kindles on sale with free financing and no credit check (a recipe for disaster).

[ovidiu]

Well Bezo's smoke & mirrors have worked for so many years. Maybe they can just suspend some more small sellers to make up for the losses.

[123]

I was pretty surprised when I heard the news, and yeah I agree with you Jeff they should def start focusing on nearing towards a profit. I feel like there doing to much at this point, but I still have faith that they will turn it around in a big way. But I did lose a considerable amount of money from this recent tumble

[rsot]

It's stock accounting time