It’s starting to look like investors are losing their patience with the world’s largest online retailer. Amazon earlier today posted its Q2 earnings results, and while revenue was up 23% at $19.34 billion, the company still can’t manage to turn that revenue into a profit.
For the quarter gone by, Amazon posted a loss of $0.27 a share. Now investors were expecting a loss, but more in the ballpark of $0.15 a share. For years now, Amazon’s share price has reached ridiculous highs on the hopes that profits were just around the corner. It’s now mid-2014 and the company still hasn’t shown investors how it plans to leverage its massive retail operation into a consistent profit generating machine.
Looking ahead to the third quarter, Amazon told investors to expect a loss of anywhere from $410 million to $810 million, a stark increase from its loss of $25 million during its 2013 third quarter.
Now all this isn’t to say Amazon isn’t trying. On the contrary, that may be what’s hurting them. The company is all over the place, with the recently announced Kindle Fire smartphone and Amazon Studios being two more recent examples. What will be interesting to pay attention to is whether or not Amazon’s new subscription e-book service will be able to generate any significant revenues.
In after hours trading, shares of Amazon are down nearly 37 points, a decrease of over 10%.
Amazon’s press release on the quarter gone by can be read here.
