Amazon stock up 15% despite second consecutive quarterly loss

Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock is up close to 15% in extended trading on Thursday even after the tech giant reported its second consecutive quarterly loss.

Amazon Q2 earnings snapshot

• Lost $2.0 billion that translates to 20 cents per share
• That compared to the year-ago 76 cents a share profit
• Sales jumped 7.0% year-over-year to $121.2 billion
• Consensus was 12 cents of EPS on $119 billion in sales
• 33% annualised growth in AWS was in line with estimates
• Advertising revenue jumped 18% YoY to $8.8 billion
• Subscription services revenue climbed 10% to $8.7 billion

The multinational took a $3.6 billion hit to sales on “unfavourable foreign exchange rates”. Its stake in Rivian also resulted in a $3.90 billion non-operating expense. Amazon stock is still down more than 20% versus its year-to-date high.

Other notable figures in Amazon earnings report

Online store sales were down 4.0% but physical went up 12% in the recent quarter. Other notable figures in Amazon Q2 earnings report include a 9.0% increase in revenue from 3^rd party seller services.

A 17% gain in services more than offset a 2.4% drop in product sales. Amazon reported results a week after it signed a $3.90 billion agreement to buy One Medical.

Wall Street currently rates the Amazon stock at “buy” and sees upside to $167 on average.

Future outlook and CEO’s remarks

For the fiscal third quarter, Amazon forecasts its sales to fall in the range of $125 billion to $130 billion on up to $3.5 billion of operating income. In comparison, experts had called for a higher $4.4 billion of operating income on $126.7 billion in sales.

In the earnings press release, CEO Andy Jassy said:

Despite continued inflationary pressures in fuel, energy, and transportation costs, we’re making progress on the more controllable costs we referenced last quarter, particularly improving the productivity of our fulfilment network.