Amazon Reports Record Increase in Prime Subscriptions

By Paul Ausick Updated Apr 27, 3:42PM EDT · Published Dec 26, 10:25AM EST

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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced Friday morning that it added more than 10 million new subscribers to its Amazon Prime free two-day delivery and streaming video service during the 2014 holiday season. At the current subscription rate of $99 a year that is around $1 billion in revenue, or about 3.4% of the consensus analyst estimate for fourth quarter revenues of $29.73 billion.

That revenue forecast is more than $4 billion higher than the company’s actual fourth-quarter revenue last year and a jump of more than 30% sequentially. Amazon’s revenues for each of the first three quarters of this year have been right around $20 billion.

Amazon listed some “fun facts” about its holiday season:

Fire TV was the best-selling streaming media box on the company’s site.
Fire tablet sales rose more than 3 times year-over-year and Kindle sales rose nearly 4 times on Black Friday.
Fire TV Stick is the fastest-selling Amazon-branded device ever.
Customers ordered more than 10 times as many items with same-day delivery compared with 2013.
Nearly 60% of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this year.
Total holiday sales from the Amazon app for smartphones doubled in 2014 in the United States.

We will have to wait until late January or early February when the company reports quarterly results to find out if Amazon posted a profit for the quarter. Last year the company posted earnings per share of $0.51 in the fourth quarter, compared with a consensus estimate of $0.66. Analysts are looking for just $0.18 per share in earnings for the current quarter after the company posted losses in both the second and third quarters of this year. For the full fiscal year, Amazon is expected to post an earnings per share loss of $0.78.

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The stock posted an all-time high just before Amazon reported earnings last January. Since then the stock has dropped about 24%. Shares traded up 1.3% Friday morning to $306.98, in a 52-week range of $284.00 to $408.06.

About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.