Amazon Misses EPS Estimates, Stock Falls

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN reported a big second-quarter earnings miss after Thursday's close.

Amazon reported Q2 earnings of 40 cents per share, which doesn't compare to analyst estimates of $1.42; The company reported EPS of $1.78 in the year-ago period. Sales came in ahead of predictions at $38 billion, beating consensus estimates by $820 million.

The e-commerce giant forecasts FY 2017 sales of $39.25 billion-$41.75 billion, against estimates of $39.9 billion. Net sales increased 25 percent in the quarter to $38 billion.

"Our teams remain heads-down and focused on customers," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "In the last few months, we launched Echo Show...introduced calling and messaging via Alexa on all Echo devices, debuted Inside Edge on Prime Video...introduced Amazon Channels in both the U.K. and Germany...hired more than 30,000 new employees, opened three new Amazon Books stores, launched more than 400 significant AWS features and services, migrated more than 7,000 databases using AWS Database Migration Service, and held our third annual Prime Day."

Bezos had quite the Thursday, briefly being crowned the world’s richest man after an initial jump in shares earlier in the day. Bezos owns a 17 percent stake of the company.

At time of publication, shares were down about 2.5 percent at $1,019.92 in after-hours trading.