Amazon.com Inc. reported its least profitable holiday quarter since 2014 on Thursday, leading to the biggest annual loss on record for the e-commerce giant, which also disappointed Wall Street with its forecast amid concerns about cloud growth. Amazon
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+7.38%
reported a holiday profit of $278 million, or 3 cents a share, down from $1.39 a share a year ago. Revenue increased to $149.2 billion from $137.41 billion a year ago. Analysts on average were expecting earnings of 17 cents a share on sales of $145.71 billion, according to FactSet.
Shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, after closing with a 7.4% increase at $112.91. “In the short term, we face an uncertain economy, but we remain quite optimistic about the long-term opportunities for Amazon,” Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a statement. Amazon was expected to post a loss for the whole year for the first time since 2014, but worse-than-expected holiday earnings actually led Amazon to the company’s worst annual loss on record. For the year, Amazon produced a net loss of $2.7 billion and revenue of $513.98 billion, up from $469.82 billion a year ago and the company’s first annual sales total to surpass a half-billion dollars. Amazon had never lost more than $1.4 billion in a single year since going public in 1997, according to FactSet records. Amazon’s fourth-quarter profit was hindered again by the decline of Rivian Automotive Inc.
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stock, which cost Amazon $2.3 billion in net income in the quarter. In addition, Amazon recognized many of the costs of its recently announced layoffs and other …