Amazon Posts Largest Profit In Its History

Amazon's stock jumped more than 6% after the e-commerce giant topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter expectations.

According to BusinessInsider, the company reported its holiday-period results on Thursday afternoon.

Here's what the company reported, compared with what analysts polled by Bloomberg had forecast:

• Revenue: $60.5 billion; analysts were expecting $59.85 billion.
• Amazon Web Services sales: $5.1 billion; the one analyst who offered an estimate to Bloomberg was looking for $5 billion.
• Earnings per share: $3.75; analysts were expecting $1.83 a share. The company's bottom line was boosted by a windfall of $789 million — or $1.59 a share — related to the new tax law. Without that benefit, the company would have earned $2.15 a share, beating estimates regardless,

Amazon gave only scant details about Whole Foods, the grocery chain it bought last year. The internet company's physical stores, which are largely its Whole Foods outlets, collectively brought in $4.5 billion in sales in the holiday quarter.

By comparison, Whole Foods as a standalone company brought in $4.9 billion in sales in its fiscal first quarter of 2017, approximately the same period a year earlier. But the sales results were actually ahead of Amazon's forecasts, Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, said on a conference call with investors.

Amazon is focusing on cutting prices at the grocery chain, even beyond those it rolled out immediately after taking control of Whole Foods last August, Olsavsky said. But its integration of Whole Foods is continuing apace, he suggested.

The company has already placed some of its automated lockers — which customers can use to pick up products or return products they've ordered online — in Whole Foods stores. It plans to list Whole Foods products on the Amazon website and to introduce a customer rewards program, Olsavsky said.