It seems the Jeff Bezos may have run out.

After several quarters of smashing expectations, moments ago Amazon (AMZN) tumbled as much as 9% after reporting EPS of $0.52, far below the $0.85 expected, on revenue of $32.7 billion, in line with estimates, and up 29% from a year earlier.Operating income also missed, printing at $575 million, below the $690.5 million expected.

The guidance was also troubling, with the company now expecting Q4 operating income between $0 and $1.25 billion, below the street’s expectation of $1.7 billion, on revenue of $42 to $45.5 billion, roughly in line with consensus of $44.6 billion.

The full guidance:

  • Net sales are expected to be between $42.0 billion and $45.5 billion, or to grow between 17% and 27% compared with fourth quarter 2015. This guidance anticipates approximately 60 basis points of favorable impact from foreign exchange rates.
  • Operating income is expected to be between $0 and $1.25 billion, compared with $1.1 billion in fourth quarter 2015.
  • This guidance assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded.
  • Digging into the number we find that while the all important AWS generated net sales of $3.23 billion, above the $3.13 billion expected, growth slowed modestly from 58% to 55% Y/Y.

    Another curious highlight is that Amazon expects to create 120,000 seasonal jobs in customer fulfillment and customer service this holiday season. We hope the BLS keeps track of this and adjusts accordingly for the surge in temp-workers. 

    Still, none of this dented Bezos’ optimism who had this to say:

    “Alexa may be Amazon’s most loved invention yet — literally — with over 250,000 marriage proposals from customers and counting,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. “And she’s just getting better. Because Alexa’s brain is in the cloud, we can easily and continuously add to her capabilities and make her more useful — wait until you see some of the surprises the team is working on now.”

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email