Amazon reports better than expected Q4, but reduces first quarter guidance – TechCrunch

Amazon had a heck of a holiday. The online retail giant posted Q4 revenues today, reporting $ 72.4 billion in revenue, peaking at $ 60.45 billion last year, and spending analysts' forecasts at $ 71.92 billion.

Extremely wealthy individual Jeff Bezos designated Alexa's record holiday season as a source of the robust quarter.

"Alexa was very busy in her holiday. Echo Dot was the best-selling product across all products worldwide on Amazon, and customers bought millions more units from the Echo family compared to last year, says CEO's earnings." Number of researchers working on Alexa has more than doubled over the past year and the performance of the team's hard work is clear. "

Amazon Web Services also played a key role here with a huge $ 2.2 billion revenue. AWS & # 39 Sales of $ 7.43 billion hit the estimates of $ 7.29 billion and marked a healthy jump from last year's $ 5.11 billion.

Figures look good, though, as CNBC notes, it's 19.7 percent revenue growth quarterly lowest since 2015. The Wall Street reaction was further dampened by the Amazon's lower first-quarter guidance, with Amazon earning $ 56 billion and $ 60 billion in the coming quarter. below analysts' expectations of $ 60.99 billion.