Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its
fourth quarter ended December 31, 2012.
Operating cash flow increased 7% to $4.18 billion for the trailing
twelve months, compared with $3.90 billion for the trailing twelve
months ended December 31, 2011. Free cash flowdecreased 81% to $395
million for the trailing twelve months, compared with $2.09 billion for
the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2011. Free cash flow for
the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2012 includes fourth
quarter cash outflows for purchases of corporate office space and
property in Seattle, Washington, of $1.4 billion.
Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards
totaled 470 million on December 31, 2012, compared with 468 million one
year ago.
Net sales increased 22% to $21.27 billion in the fourth quarter,
compared with $17.43 billion in fourth quarter 2011. Excluding the $178
million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign
exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales grew 23% compared with
fourth quarter 2011.
Operating income increased 56% to $405 million in the fourth quarter,
compared with $260 million in fourth quarter 2011. The favorable impact
from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the
quarter on operating income was $2 million.
Net income decreased 45% to $97 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.21
per diluted share, compared with $177 million, or $0.38 per diluted
share, in fourth quarter 2011.
"We're now seeing the transition we've been expecting," said Jeff Bezos,
founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "After 5 years, eBooks is a multi-billion
dollar category for us and growing fast -- up approximately 70% last
year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest
December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5%. We're
excited and very grateful to our customers for their response to Kindle
and our ever expanding ecosystem and selection."
Full Year 2012
Net sales increased 27% to $61.09 billion, compared with $48.08 billion
in 2011. Excluding the $854 million unfavorable impact from
year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year,
net sales grew 29% compared with 2011.
Operating income decreased 22% to $676 million, compared with $862
million in 2011. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in
foreign exchange rates throughout the year on operating income was $14
million.
Net loss was $39 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, compared with net
income of $631 million, or $1.37 per diluted share, in 2011.
Highlights
For the second year in a row, Amazon's tablet was the most popular
item for customers -- Kindle Fire HD continued its run as the #1
best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the
millions of items available on Amazon worldwide. At year-end, Kindle
Fire HD, Kindle Fire, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle held the top four
spots on the Amazon worldwide best seller charts since launch.
Amazon announced the launch of AutoRip, a new service that gives
customers free MP3 versions of CDs they purchase from Amazon.
Additionally, customers who have purchased AutoRip CDs at any time
since Amazon first opened its Music Store in 1998 will find MP3
versions of those albums in their Cloud Player libraries -- also
automatically and for free.
Amazon introduced Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, bringing together for the
first time all of the types of content kids and parents love -- books,
games, educational apps, movies and TV shows -- into one simple,
unlimited, easy-to-use service for kids ages 3-8.
Amazon's digital media selection has grown to over 23 million movies,
TV shows, songs, magazines, books, audiobooks, and popular apps and
games in 2012, an increase from 19 million at year-end 2011.
Amazon.com announced new licensing agreements with Turner
Broadcasting, Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, and A+E
Networks, for popular television series including Falling Skies,
The Closer, Pawn Stars, Storage Wars, and Dance
Moms, expanding its catalog of title offerings for Prime Instant
Video to more than 36,000 movies and television episodes.
Amazon launched Kindle Stores for Brazil, Canada, China, and Japan,
with a large selection of the most popular books, including thousands
of local-language books.
Amazon announced that 23 KDP authors each sold over 250,000 copies of
their books in 2012, and that over 500 KDP Select books have reached
the top 100 Kindle best seller lists around the world.
Amazon announced that for the eighth consecutive year, the company
ranks No. 1 in customer satisfaction during the holiday shopping season
according to the ForeSee annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index.
ForeSee surveyed over 24,000 customers between Thanksgiving and
Christmas, asking them to rate their satisfaction with the top 100
retailers. For the second year in a row, Amazon's score of 88 is the
highest ever attained by any retailer in the study.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of its newest Asia
Pacific Region in Sydney, Australia, now available for multiple
services including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple
Storage Service (S3), and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).
Sydney joins Singapore and Tokyo as the third Region in Asia Pacific
and the ninth Region worldwide.
AWS announced that SAP Business Suite is now certified to run on the
AWS cloud platform. Enterprises running SAP Business Suite can now
leverage the on-demand, pay as you go AWS platform to support
thousands of concurrent users in production without making costly
capital expenditures for their underlying infrastructure. AWS also
announced that SAP HANA, SAP's in-memory database and platform, is
certified to run on AWS and is available for purchase via AWS
Marketplace.
AWS continued its rapid pace of innovation by launching 159 new
services and features in 2012. This is nearly double the services and
features launched in 2011.
AWS has lowered prices 24 times since it launched in 2006, including
10 price reductions in 2012.
