AMAZON WOWS STREET

Prime, Xmas gifts to Q4

Amazon shares soared in extended trading Thursday after the company posted a monster earnings report highlighting its strong holiday sales.

The e-commerce juggernaut headed by Jeff Bezos saw its stock climb as much as 13 percent after it walloped analysts’ profit expectations and said it added more Prime subscribers in a quarter than ever before.

The skyrocketing stock brought Amazon’s market cap past the $1 trillion mark, where it rejoined Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft in the four-comma club — and added about $15 billion to Bezos’ net worth.

Amazon had previously breached the $1 trillion barrier in late 2018, before dipping below it shortly after.

The surge sent Amazon’s stock to more than $2,000 a share and pushed Bezos (inset) — already the richest man in the world — to a net worth of just under $130 billion, up from $115 billion.

Amazon reported earnings per share of $6.47, blowing past the $4.03 a share expected by Wall Street. It hauled in $87.4 billion in revenue, above forecasts for $86.02 million.

Amazon’s bread-and-butter cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, saw 34 percent growth year-overyear to $9.95 billion in revenue, compared with Wall

Street’s expectations for sales of $9.84 billion. Its advertising arm also grew 41 percent year-over-year, to $4.8 billion.

The company’s operating expenses climbed nearly 22 percent during the quarter, to $83.5 billion, as it continued to invest in same-day delivery, in a bid to outmaneuver rivals like Walmart, which is offering two-day free shipping — without subscription fees.

In prepared remarks, Bezos touted “over 150 million” paid Prime members around the world. The Seattle company last gave an update on its Prime subscribers in April 2018, when it said it had more than 100 million people paying $119 a year for “free” two-day shipping, as well as for the company’s streaming video services.

Bezos said the number of items delivered through same-day and one-day shipping “quadrupled this quarter compared to last year,” without breaking down the growth.

Amazon also said that “tens of millions” of its devices, which include the Echo family of smart speakers as well as the Fire TV Stick, were ordered during the holiday season.

The tech giant forecast $69 billion to $73 billion in sales for the first quarter, in line with expectations for $71.7 billion.

Shares were up 9.8 percent at 7:25 p.m., at $2,053.20.