Amazon Earnings Outdo Estimates
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, U.S.A., 2000 OCT 24 (NB) -- By Dick Kelsey, Newsbytes. Here's one for the books. And electronics. And music.
Online retail giant Amazon.com [NASDAQ:AMZN] delivered a big surprise in its third quarter earnings report: losses beat analysts' estimates by nearly 25 percent. What's more, sales exploded.
The losses were $68 million, or 25 cents per share; that's an improvement over $79 million, or 26 cents per share loss in the third quarter of 1999. Analysts estimated losses would be 33 cents. Sales were $638 million in the quarter, up 79 percent over $356 million in the third quarter of 1999.
Amazon is ready for the upcoming holiday buying season, said chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, addressing a period that is crucial in the eyes of analysts. "We've already begun our weekly war room meetings," Bezos said in a conference call with analysts, citing improvements in customer service and other operational areas.
The customer count increased by over 2.8 million during the quarter to more than 25 million as of Sept. 30. Active per-customer sales for the 12 months ended Sept. 30 were $130, up from $108 for the same period a year ago. For the first time electronics sales surpassed music to become Amazon's second-best selling sector behind books, with six of the site's 10-top selling items.
Bezos said Amazon will continue to use e-mail, broad-scale advertising and other marketing tools, as well as its most powerful form of customer gains and retention - the Web site itself.
"We do have the ability to personalize the Web site for our repeat customers," he said. "It's something we get a little bit better at as each month goes by."
Operating cash usage in the third quarter was $4 million, compared to $76 million in the year-ago quarter.
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Amazon +11% nachbörslich.
