Amazon revenue grew by 22 percent in Q2, but still missed targets

Amazon reported second quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.

The e-commerce and cloud giant reported a second quarter net loss of $7 million, or two cents per share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were two cents per share on a revenue of $15.70 billion.

While sales were up by 22 percent compared to the same quarter last year, those stats still missed the targets.

Wall Street was looking for earnings of six cents per share on a revenue of $15.74 billion.

Immediately after the Q2 report was published, Amazon shares slipped by by approximately three percent in after-hours trading.

Redirecting the focus on the Kindle brand, CEO Jeff Bezos reflected on the quarter in prepared remarks:

The Kindle service keeps getting better. The Kindle Store now offers millions of titles including more than 350,000 exclusives that you won’t find anywhere else. Prime Instant Video has surpassed 40,000 titles, including many premium exclusives like Downton Abbey and Under the Dome. And we’ve added more than a thousand books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, bringing together in one place all the types of content kids and parents love.

For the third quarter, Wall Street expects Amazon to deliver earnings of 10 cents per share on a revenue of $16.99 billion.

Amazon is projecting Q3 revenue to fall between $15.45 billion and $17.15 billion, which translates to a 12 to 24 percent increase from the third quarter of 2012.

The online retail giant is notorious for not breaking down a lot of numbers that surely analysts and media would like  to see concerning Kindle device sales as well as Amazon Web Services.

Thus, here is a glance at what the Seattle corporation did reveal from its second quarter:

• Amazon Web Services was certified for FedRAMP Compliance for extensive security requirements in running as well as protecting sensitive U.S. Government applications and data.
• AWS launched its own certification program for IT professionals, accrediting skills and technical knowledge necessary for building and maintaining applications and services on the AWS Cloud.
• AWS lowered prices once again.  AWS announced it had lowered prices by up to 80% on Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances pricing was slashed by up to 80 percent, while Amazon RDS instances with On-Demand saw price reductions of up to 28 percent and Reserved Instance (RI) were cut by up to 27 percent.
• New subsidiary Goodreads now has over 20 million members, up from 10 million in less than one year.
• Amazon Appstore is now available to millions of customers in nearly 200 countries.
• Amazon extended its online marketplace to India.
• Amazon Publishing also added a new digital publishing scheme centered around fan fiction dubbed Kindle Worlds.
• The Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 are now available in over 170 countries. There were notable launches for the Kindle brand in Canada, China, and India during the quarter.
• There are now more than 350,000 books exclusive to the Kindle Store.