(CercleFinance.com) – Amazon fell more than 6% on Friday in early trading on Wall Street in the wake of first quarter forecasts below analysts’ expectations.
The Internet giant said last night that it expects to record net sales of between $121 billion and $126 billion in its first quarter, a range whose median does not reach the average consensus of $125 billion.
Its operating profit should stand out between zero and four billion dollars over the first three months of the year, a forecast whose median is again lower than the consensus of 3.6 billion dollars.
While analysts believe these cautious forecasts only reflect the reality of an increasingly uncertain economic environment, some are concerned about the pressures on AWS, the cloud computing arm of the Seattle group.
In the fourth quarter, the turnover of the cloud subsidiary jumped 20%, confirming the strong growth enjoyed by this engine of activity.
But analysts expected better (+21%) and Amazon warned that AWS growth should be around only 15% in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.
‘We see that the ‘cloud’ sector is beginning to suffer from cost reductions initiated by companies, ‘says one at BofA.
“The expected slowdown at AWS means that its outlook does not even reach the forecasts established by Wall Street,” continues the New York bank.
As for the fourth quarter, the performance published by Amazon turned out to be a little better than expected, with sales showing an increase of 9% to 149.2 billion dollars.
The group also reported a quarterly net profit of 300 million dollars, against 14.3 billion dollars, but shows a loss of 2.7 billion dollars for the whole of the 2022 financial year. losses (non-cash) suffered on its investment in Rivian Automotive.
Following this publication, Wells Fargo analysts lowered their price target from $155 to $145, while Wedbush Securities teams reduced their target from $140 to $125.
At its current price, Amazon shares are up 28% since the start of the year, but have fallen another 23% over the past 12 months.
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