Why Amazon Shares Are Rising

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN shares are trading higher by 12.1% at $3,113.00 Friday morning after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings results.

Amazon.com reported Q4 adjusted EPS of $5.80, beating the $3.67 analyst consensus estimate. Amazon also reported sales of $137.40B, which did miss the analyst consensus estimate of $137.60 billion.

Amazon is guiding for first-quarter sales between $112 billion to $117 billion, which is below the analyst consensus estimate of first-quarter sales of $120.11 billion.

"A big thank you to employees across Amazon who overcame another quarter of COVID-related challenges and delivered for customers this holiday season. Given the extraordinary growth we saw in 2020 when customers predominantly stayed home, and the fact that we've continued to grow on top of that in 2021, our Retail teammates have effectively operated in peak mode for almost two years. It's been a tremendous effort, and I'm appreciative and proud of how hard our teams have worked to serve customers," said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO.

"As expected over the holidays, we saw higher costs driven by labor supply shortages and inflationary pressures, and these issues persisted into the first quarter due to Omicron. Despite these short-term challenges, we continue to feel optimistic and excited about the business as we emerge from the pandemic. When you combine how we're staffing and scaling our fulfillment network to bring even faster delivery to more customers, the extraordinary growth of AWS with 40% year-over-year growth (and now a $71 billion revenue run rate), the addition of marquee new entertainment like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Thursday Night Football, and a plethora of new capabilities that we're building in areas like Alexa, Ring, Grocery, Pharmacy, Amazon Care, Kuiper, and Zoox, there's a lot to look forward to in the months and years ahead," Jassy stated.

See Also: Here's Why Analysts Are Bullish On Amazon Post-Q4

Amazon has a 52-week high of $3,773.08 and a 52-week low of $2,707.04.