Amazon See First Quarter Jump of 18%

Amazon, the online behemoth posted first quarter results that were up by 18% as online shoppers continue to buy products from the mega retailer.

The results were higher than Wall Street expectations and on the news shares increased by close to 2% in trading after hours.

Amazon has focused for a long period on spending its earnings to grow the business and expand into new territory, from e-readers to streaming movies and even the delivery of groceries.

This week Prime Pantry was launched by Amazon. This is a grocery delivery service for members of Prime. In addition, in April the company introduced its first video streaming set-top box named Amazon Fire, which costs just $99.

Rumors of a phone by Amazon have been tossed around recently as well, but to date nothing has materialized. CEO Jeff Bezos said the company gets its energy through inventing for their customers and this year has started well.

While most investors have for the most part given the behemoth online retailer a pass for its focus on growth and investing instead of turning a large profit, Amazon made some moves of late to strengthen the company’s bottom line.

It increased the price of its shipping membership program Prime to $99 from $79 to offset the higher costs of shipping. Costs to ship have increased by 31% during the past quarter to $1.83 billion.

To entice additional people to join the service at the price of $99, which also includes its service of video streaming, the retailer on Tuesday said it had signed a new deal with HBO to start streaming some of its older content starting on May 21.

The news from Amazon was a coup for the company. HBO has refused steadfastly to license any programming to other services that offer streaming such as Hulu and Netflix.

Net income during the recent quarter increased to $108 million or 23 per share, compared to last year’s $82 million or 18 cents a share during the same period.

Analysts were expecting earnings to be 21 cents per share. Revenue was up 23% to $19.74 billion compared to last year of $16.06 billion during the same reporting period. Analysts were expecting $19.42 billion.

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Roxanne Briean

I am a geek, a gamer and a writer. I have always been fascinated with the online community. At the moment I work as a full-time writer and study interior design. When I'm not scouring the net in search of interesting new gadgets and software I spend my time in MOBAs or drawing.