Amazon Shares Hit $2,000 After Crushing Q4 Earnings, Sales

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) surged Thursday afternoon after the company reported a strong fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat.

Amazon posted earnings of $6.47 per share, blowing away the $4.03 that had been expected by the Street.

Amazon also came in solidly ahead of estimates on revenue, posting quarterly sales $87.4 billion which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $86.02 billion by 1.6%, as more people joined Amazon Prime in the quarter than ever before.

The sales figure was a whopping 20% higher than the same period a year ago. Earnings were up more than 7% over the same period last year.

Amazon also said it expects first-quarter sales of $69 billion to $73 billion, with analysts expecting $71.6 billion.

Other Highlights

• Operating cash flow increased 25% to $38.5 billion for the trailing 12 months.
• Free cash flow increased to $25.8 billion for the trailing twelve months.
• Net sales for 2019 increased 20% to $280.5 billion, compared with $232.9 billion in 2018.
• Amazon Prime members watched double the hours of original movies and TV shows on Prime Video during the quarter compared to last year.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos focused on the company's Amazon Prime membership service.

“More people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world,” Bezos said in a statement. “We’ve made Prime delivery faster — the number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime’s free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year."

Bezos also touted the company's free two-hour grocery delivery from Whole Foods that's available in many cities.

"Members now have free two-hour grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market in more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns.

AMZN Stock Surges

Amazon shares surged nearly 12% to $2,092.02 in after-hours trading. The stock closed at $1,870.68 per share.

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