Amazon beat Street estimates in its fiscal Q4

Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) just reported better-than-expected financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter that reflected its commitment to cutting costs and improving fulfillment efficiency. Shares of the tech titan are up 3.0% at writing.

Here's how AWS did in the fourth quarter

Investors are cheering partially because Amazon Web Services that typically is the strongest segment for the multinational did well in Q4.

The cloud-computing platform brought in $24.2 billion in revenue (up 13% year-on-year) which was in line with Street estimates. Andy Jassy – the chief executive of Amazon.com Inc said in a press release today:

Also on Thursday, Amazon announced Rufus – a new artificial intelligence enabled assistant for shopping. $AMZN is now up nearly 15% versus its year-to-date low.

Notable figures in Amazon Q4 earnings release

• Earned $10.6 billion versus the year-ago $300 million
• Per-share earnings also climbed from 3 cents to $1.0
• Revenue jumped 14% year-over-year to $170 billion
• Consensus was 80 cents a share on $166.2 billion revenue
• Advertising revenue climbed a more than expected 27%
• Operating income nearly quintupled to $13.2 billion

Amazon now forecasts its sales to fall between $138 billion to $143.5 billion in its current quarter. Analysts were at $142.1 billion instead. CEO Jassy also said on Thursday: