AMAZON FLOODING
Bezos $pends big on series to drown Netflix
Watch out, Netflix: Jeff Bezos is pouring cash into Hollywood again.
Amazon’s hard-charging boss will nearly double the Web giant’s spending this fall on original series like “Transparent” and “The Man in the High Castle” — pressuring Netflix to defend the empire it has built with hits like “House of Cards.”
Amazon execs let their bigbudget plans slip during a late Thursday conference call with analysts, as the Seattle-based e-commerce behemoth reported blowout second-quarter results.
Amazon brass declined to give specific dollar figures, but said second-half spending on media “content” will nearly double from the second half of 2015.
Amazon said it spent $1.3 billion on media content in 2014, but hasn’t since updated the figures.
In addition to new seasons of “Transparent” and “High Castle,” Amazon is producing new episodes of its “Mozart in the Jungle” and “Catastrophe” series.
A Woody Allen TV series, which still hasn’t been named, is also in the offing.
This fall, the company noted its Amazon Studios unit likewise has scheduled a number of theatrical releases, including “Manches- ter by the Sea,” “The Handmaiden” and “Gleason.”
Amazon’s war chest for high-dollar productions is growing fast.
The online retailer’s second-quarter profit totaled $857 million, or $1.78 a share — rocketing past Wall Street’s forecast of $1.11 a share. A year earlier, Amazon earned $92 million, or 19 cents a share.
Revenue jumped 31 percent, topping the company’s earlier forecast of $28 billion to $30.5 billion.
Amazon’s better-than-expected news stood in contrast to that of Netflix, which spooked investors last week with surprisingly weak subscriber numbers, tanking its shares.
Amazon Web Services— a fast-growing, highly profitable Web-hosting platform whose big clients, ironically, include Netflix itself — posted net sales of $2.9 billion, up 58 percent from a year earlier.
The quarterly revenue figure would appear to put the internet platform ahead of schedule on Bezos’ stated goal of $10 million in revenue this year.
Operating income from AWS came in at $718 million. That staggering figure, driven by the unit’s 30-percent operating margin, was slightly higher than the total of $702 million that came from the rest of its sprawling operations across North America.
Indeed, the most recent quarter marked Amazon’s third in a row for record profits. The company — which had long frustrated Wall Street with losses as it spent heavily on growth — has now racked up five straight profitable quarters.
Amazon’s stock rose 1.9 percent, to $766.60, in afterhours trading Thursday.
The results also boosted Bezos’ personal fortune to $65.3 billion, helping him surpass Warren Buffett to become the world’s third-richest man for the first time, according to Forbes. Bezos, 52, owns 18 percent of Amazon.