Shares of Amazon are down more than 10 percent in after-hours trading today after the Seattle tech giant missed analyst expectations for profit and revenue during the 2015 holiday quarter.
For its fourth quarter, Amazon posted earnings per share of $1.00, which missed expectations of $1.56 per share. The company also narrowly missed on revenue expectations, reeling in $35.7 billion in the fourth quarter — analysts expected $35.9 billion.
The $35.7 billion in net sales is up 22 percent from the year-ago quarter. Despite missing big on analyst expectations, the earnings per share of $1.00 (net income of $482 million) is up 122 percent from last year (net income of $214 million).
“Twenty years ago, I was driving the packages to the post office myself and hoping we might one day afford a forklift,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. “This year, we pass $100 billion in annual sales and serve 300 million customers. And still, measured by the dynamism we see everywhere in the marketplace and by the ever-expanding opportunities we see to invent on behalf of customers, it feels every bit like Day 1.”
Amazon added more than 8,000 employees last quarter as it now employs 230,800 worldwide — the headcount includes full-time and part-time workers at the company’s fulfillment centers. In the third quarter, Amazon added 39,300 employees.
Amazon Web Services, meanwhile, posted $2.4 billion in revenue and operating income of $687 million — up 69 and 186 percent, respectively, from last year.
Amazon also noted that Prime memberships around the world increased by 51 percent in 2015.
Before today’s earnings report, Amazon’s stock spiked nearly 9 percent on Thursday. Shares are up more than 100 percent over the last year.
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