Amazon reported first quarter sales on Thursday afternoon following the close of the market, with net income of $513 million (or $1.07 per share) that was almost double what analysts were expecting. The company’s shares are up close to 10 percent in early Friday trading as a result. Net sales rose 28 percent to $29.13 billion, also well ahead of projections. As in previous quarters, the real source of the profits is the fast-growing AWS web services business, where operating income was $604 million. North American media sales of $3.21 billion were up 8 percent (gaining $239 million) and international media […]
Booksellers
Apple Falls Below Low Expectations — But “Services” Still Grows
As expected, Apple reported the first year-over-year quarterly decline in revenue in more than a decade, as sales of $50.56 billion fell below analysts’ lowered expectations. Sales were down in every region except Japan, with China and the rest of Asia declining more than the US (-10%) and Europe (-5%). But in the segment that has the most relevance for the book business, and the area where they are directly competitive with Amazon and Google, the “services” line item that includes the iTunes stores, revenue still grew. Sales of $5.99 billion were up 20 percent from $5 billion a year ago. […]
Google Play Gains Again, Even As Earnings Are Below Analysts’ Estimates; Apple China iBooks Shutdown Confirmed
The headline from Thursday afternoon’s earnings release from Alphabet/Google was that earnings came in below analysts’ expectations, with first quarter sales of $20.3 billion up 17 percent. In the segment we follow, the glamorous “Other revenue” that incorporates the Google Play store, sales of $2.1 billion were up 24 percent (though 1 percent below the previous, holiday quarter). In the investor conference call, the company said, “Year-over-year performance was driven by Play as well as continued strong growth in cloud and apps and a nice contribution from hardware.” Apple‘s earnings report was postponed until next week. In the meantime, the […]
Bezos’s Annual Letter Celebrates “Three Big Pillars,” Vaguely Defends “Corporate Culture”
Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos wrote his annual letter to shareholders and, as with last year’s letter, he focuses on the trinity (or “three big pillars”) of Prime, Marketplace, and AWS. (The last time he mentioned readers or Kindle was two years ago.) Prime membership grew 47 percent growth in the US last year and counts “tens of millions of members worldwide.” And “close to 50 percent of units sold on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers” (which includes publishers who sell ebooks on an agency basis). This year’s letter also speaks vaguely at length about “corporate cultures,” following criticism of Amazon’s work environment: “For better or for […]
Barnes & Noble Education Gives Up On Yuzu
We’ve been skeptical of Barnes & Noble Education’s digital platform Yuzu since they started it in 2014, ever since we learned that a yuzu “is a hybrid citrus fruit with curiously high ratio of seeds to juice.” In reporting fiscal third quarter results on Tuesday morning, the company finally announced the end of their attempt to turn what didn’t work for Nook into something similar: “In an effort to reduce and manage digital expenditures, while at the same time maintaining high quality digital products,” they said, they are migrating their digital platform to Ingram’s VitalSource. (Not unlike their competitor Chegg, which […]
Book Sales Fell at Barnes & Noble
As usual, Barnes & Noble’s more detailed SEC quarterly filing followed their Thursday morning earnings report, and it offers some additional details about their business. Perhaps most notably, the company forget to underscore that in their most important holiday quarter, they sold fewer books. Book sales fell $12.3 million (or 1.7 percent), “on lower sales of trade and juvenile titles, partially offset by strong sales of coloring books.” The continuing mess at BN.com — where they took a site that was not performing well and performed an extensive revamp that made it worse — brought site sales down $15.6 million […]