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Amazon shares start slipping on weak Q4 earnings report

Amazon's Q4 and 2013 sales numbers were up annually, but they still didn't meet the high expectations set by analysts in accordance with the holiday season.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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The 2013 holiday season didn't pan out to be very fruitful as hoped for many retailers, and it was questionable how Amazon fared going into Thursday's fourth quarter earnings report.

The online retail giant reported a net income of $239 million, or 52 cents per share (statement).

Non-GAAP earnings were 51 cents per share on a revenue of $25.59 billion.

That's a 20 percent increase from the same quarter last year, but Wall Street was expecting Amazon to report non-GAAP fourth quarter earnings of 67 cents a share on revenue of $26.05 billion.

As a result, Amazon shares started to slip in after-hours trading.

Sales were also up for 2013 overall. The Seattle-headquartered corporation churned an annual revenue of $74.45 billion, up 22 percent from 2012.

Pushing those figures to the side in favor of buzzed-about products launched over the last three months, CEO Jeff Bezos reflected on the quarter in prepared remarks:

It’s a good time to be an Amazon customer. You can now read your Kindle gate-to-gate, get instant on-device tech support via our revolutionary Mayday button, and have packages delivered to your door even on Sundays. In just the last weeks, Forrester, YouGov, and ForeSee have all ranked Amazon #1 – and we believe we’re just scratching the surface of what world-class customer service can be.

For the current quarter, Wall Street wants Amazon to return with earnings of 54 cents per share on a revenue of $19.67 billion.

Amazon offered a revenue guidance range of $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion.

Here's a closer look at how Amazon wrapped up the year, by the numbers:

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