Amazon forecasts first-quarter sales below Wall Street estimates

Amazon. com on Thursday forecast first-quarter sales below Wall Street estimates, as it faces regulatory hurdles in India and a slowdown in ecommerce sales in Europe. Shares of the company fell 1.1 per cent to $1,700 in trading after the bell. Amazon employs about 2,500 people in the Republic.

Amazon began removing a wide array of products from its India website late on Thursday to comply with the new foreign investment curbs that kick in on February 1st and disallow companies from selling products via vendors in which they have an equity interest.

The company forecast net sales of between $56 billion and $60 billion for the first quarter, missing the analyst average estimate of $60.77 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Net sales for the fourth quarter rose 19.7 per cent to $72.38 billion and beat the analyst average estimate of $71.87 billion on the back of a strong holiday season.

Tax gain

Amazon’s net income rose to $3.03 billion, or $6.04 per share, in the quarter ended December 31st from $1.86 billion, or $3.75 per share, a year earlier, which included a tax gain. Net sales in North America, its biggest market, jumped 18.3 per cent to $44.12 billion in the reported quarter. Revenue in its Amazon Web Services cloud business surged 45.3 per cent to $7.43 billion to beat estimate of $7.26 billion.