Amazon Profit Surges

Wall Street had high hopes for Amazon’s first-quarter earnings and the the company did not disappoint. After market close Thursday, Amazon turned in a solid earnings report whose highlight was a 68 percent surge in profit. The retailer reported net income of $299 million, or 66 cents a share, compared with $177 million, or 41 cents a share, it posted last year. Revenue grew 46 percent to $7.13 billion.

Quite a showing considering the consensus estimate had Amazon (AMZN) reporting earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $6.87 billion.

In a statement, Amazon once again touted the Kindle e-reader as its “#1 bestselling product” and once again declined to offer any hard sales figures on the device, which is becoming increasingly more relevant with the arrival of Apple’s iPad and the expectation that other tablet devices will be landing soon. In a statement, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said:

“We remain heads-down focused on customers. Amazon Prime has just celebrated its fifth anniversary, adoption of Amazon Web Services continues to accelerate, Kindle remains our #1 bestselling product, and earlier this week, Kindle selection reached 500,000 titles.”