Photo:Xinhua

 
US top e-retailer Amazon.com, Inc. said Thursday that its net sales smashed market expectations for the fourth quarter of 2019 by jumping 21 percent to 87.4 billion US dollars.

Amazon's sales growth outperformed previous market estimates of about 86.02 billion dollars, a big jump from 72.4 billion dollars recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said its net income rose to 3.3 billion dollars for the fourth quarter ended on Dec. 31, 2019, delivering earnings per share (EPS) of 6.47 dollars, compared to EPS of 6.04 dollars on 3.0 billion dollars in net income in the same quarter of the year before.

For the full year of 2019, Amazon earned 280.5 billion dollars in net sales, up 20 percent over 232.9 billion dollars in the previous year. Its annual net income rose to 11.6 billion dollars, or ESP of 23.01 dollars, compared to EPS of 20.14 on net income of 10.1 billion dollars registered in 2018.

On the cloud service front, Amazon Web Services (AWS) grew 34 percent to 9.954 billion dollars in net sales in the fourth quarter, compared to 7.43 billion dollars in the corresponding period of the year before.

The full-year ASW sales were 35 billion dollars, compared to the figure of 25.66 billion dollars posted in 2018.

Amazon's subscription service revenue, including its mainstay Prime membership fees, increased 31 percent from a year ago to reach 5.24 billion dollars for the fourth quarter.

"Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year ... and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.

Amazon expects its net sales to grow in a range between 16 percent and 22 percent in the first quarter of 2020, to reach between 69 billion dollars and 73 billion dollars.