Amazon’s youthful units drive profit to double analysts’ estimates
San Francisco/Bengaluru— Amazon.com forecast strong northern hemisphere autumn sales and posted a profit that was double Wall Street targets on Thursday, thanks to the retailer’s younger, higher-earning businesses, including cloud computing and advertising. Its shares rose more than 3% in after-hours trade. The report was a relief to investors in the US technology sector, still reeling from a profit warning by Facebook on Wednesday that sent its stock plunging 19%. Amazon’s report shows how the world’s largest online retailer has increasingly learnt to compensate for the high costs of fast package delivery and video streaming by controlling expenses and building up higher-profit businesses. It was the first mover in the business of selling data storage and computing power in the cloud, a bet that continues to reap rewards and give it the leeway to invest in grand projects. For instance, the company is working to ship food from Whole Foods Market stores across the US, in an ambitious...
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