Amazon posted net income of $79 million in the third quarter ended September 30, 2015 compared to a loss of $437 million in the third period of 2014. Total sales jumped 23% in the quarter, to $25.4 billion and were up 30% excluding the negative impact of foreign exchange. The performance of both the e-tailer’s sales and earnings was better than analysts had been expecting.
The big driver was Amazon Web Services, which houses its cloud-based businesses, and sales in the quarter jumped to $2.1 billion from $1.2 billion one year ago. There already has been talk in financial circles about Amazon spinning off AWS into its own company, although Amazon has given no indication it is thinking along those lines.
Sales in the North America media segment, which includes books, rose 8%, to just under $3 billion; international media sales fell 8%, but that was attributed largely to the impact of foreign exchange.
In its press release, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos gave a big pitch for its $50 Fire tablet, noting the customer response to the new Fire devices (there are four new ones) has been so strong that Amazon is building “millions more than we’d already planned.”
Looking at the fourth quarter, Amazon said it expects total revenue to increase between 14% and 25% and gave a very wide ranging estimate on possible profits in the quarter, saying operating income could be anywhere from $80 million to almost $1.3 billion.
