With Amazon posting better earnings performances than expected in its most recent quarters, the retail giant disappointed analysts and investors in the third quarter.
While operating income jumped 42% in the quarter ended August 31, over the comparable period in 2015, the profits amounted to 52 cents per share; analysts had been expecting earnings per share to be up to 78 cents.
Amazon’s miss on earnings per share offset another impressive revenue performance, though, as sales increased 29% in the third quarter, to $32.7 billion. The fastest-growing segment was Amazon’s cloud services business where sales in the quarter jumped 55%, to $3.23 billion.
North America sales in Amazon’s media business rose 8% in the third quarter ended August 31, 2016 over the comparable period of 2015. Revenue in the media group, which includes sales of print and digital books, was $3.24 billion in the most recent quarter, up from $3.0 billion in the same period in 2015.
Media continues to be a shrinking part of Amazon’s overall business. In the most recent quarter media accounted for 9.8% of the company’s total $32.7 billion revenue, down from 11.8% of its $25.4 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2015.
Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Amazon projected that revenue will grow between 17% and 27% over the fourth quarter of 2015. The company said if may breakeven in the quarter or earn up to $1.25 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2015 Amazon had operating income of $1.1 billion.
