Amazon fourth quarter sales up a staggering 42%
It would appear that the current economic downturn has had little to no effect on Amazon as the online store has posted sales growth of 42 percent for the fourth quarter of 2009.
The holiday shopping season was extremely good to the king of ecommerce. Net sales increased 42 percent to $9.52 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $6.70 billion in fourth quarter 2008. Excluding the $354 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 37 percent compared with fourth quarter 2008.
In short, no matter how you slice it, Amazon had an amazing holiday shopping season.
For the entire year, net sales increased 28 percent to $24.51 billion, or 29 percent excluding the $182 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year, compared with $19.17 billion in 2008. What is intriguing about this is that it tells us Amazon was only running slightly ahead of 2008 up until the fourth quarter. The company needed $5.34 billion in the Sept. to Dec. quarter to tie 2008, which was doable since the fourth quarter of 2008 was $6.70 billion.
So, while the company had a good 2009 in spite of the current recession, something happened in the fourth quarter that just pushed everything way over the top. Some other highlights from the announcement include the fact that Amazon is now selling six Kindle edition books for every ten print books the company sells. TechCrunch is reporting that a source it spoke to within Amazon puts the number of Kindles sold up through Dec. 2009 at around three million units, and this number predates new international editions, and a current promotion where Amazon is quietly offering free Kindles to select long time customers.
The purchase of Zappos was completed in Nov. 2009 and contributed $200 million to the fourth quarter numbers for Amazon.
It seems it was a very good year for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and company.
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