While Samsung’s Q4 earnings are down, Amazon’s Q4 earnings are just coming in and it seems that according to Amazon, their earnings are up by about 15% to a total of $29.33 billion in Q4. Amazon’s fourth quarter ended on December 31st, and with the huge flop of the Fire Phone some might not have expected Amazon’s earnings to rise as much as they did, although admittedly these number surely could have been increased if Fire Phone profits were higher than they have been since release. Despite the Fire phone’s lackluster performance in the sales department, Amazon had plenty of other revenue streams which helped them earn more than they did in Q4 of 2013.
In addition to raising their net sales from the 2013 to 2014, Amazon also has a higher operating cash flow from the trailing twelve months ending December 31st of 2014, coming up to $6.84 billion which is about 25%, up from $5.47 billion from the trailing twelve months in 2013 on the same date. Amazon’s positive numbers didn’t come easy as they spent the better part of 2014’s fourth quarter recovering from heavy losses on the Fire Phone. Those losses are also likely a big reason as to why we’ve seen Amazon dump the price to pick up a Fire Phone as they were merely trying to gain back as much profit as they possibly could.
Also included in Amazon’s earnings are their Operating income and Net income. The Operating income is up drastically from 2013 to a total of $591 million in 2014 from $510 million the previous year. Because of their higher operating costs, Amazon’s Net income was lower in 2014 than it was the previous year coming in at a total of $214 million at the end of the fourth quarter compared to $239 million the previous year. Although Amazon was feeling the weight of their heavy losses, they also saw many benefits from various areas like introducing Prime Now which gives members in supported cities the ability to have paid one-hour and free two-hour delivery of thousands of daily essentials right to their front door. Amazon also increased the cost of Amazon Prime, which saw Amazon’s worldwide paid membership percentages grow by 53% in 2014. Amazon also states that Prime memberships grew by 50% in the U.S. alone. Overall, Amazon’s Net losses for the full year of 2014 were $241 million compared to their Net profits of $274 million in 2013. The good news for Amazon is that the worst part seems to be over when to their margins and numbers seem to be on the upswing. We can probably attribute the biggest chunk of this to increased Prime memberships. Whether or not Amazon continues this forward momentum on their margins remains to be seen as its way too early to tell.