Amazon Q4 2011: Net Income Falls 58 Percent, Kindle Sales Soar

Amazon Inc. has announced its earnings from the last quarter of 2011.

According to a press release, net sales increased to $17.43 billion, a 35 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2010.

Net income for Q4 2011 decreased 58 percent to $177 million, or $0.38 per diluted share. Net income for the fourth quarter of the previous year totalled $416 million, or $0.91 per diluted share.

Kindle sales soared during Q4 2011, especially the Kindle Fire, which Amazon said was the top-selling product on Amazon.com for the 17 weeks preceding December 31, 2011. According to Amazon, sales of the entire Kindle line -- including tablets and eReader devices -- increased by 177 percent over Q3 2010 during the nine-weeks holiday sales period ending on December 31.

Results for the entire year are as follows, per Amazon's release:

Net sales increased 41% to $48.08 billion, compared with $34.20 billion in 2010.[...]

Operating income decreased 39% to $862 million, compared with $1.41 billion in 2010.[...]

Net income decreased 45% to $631 million in 2011, or $1.37 per diluted share, compared with net income of $1.15 billion, or $2.53 per diluted share, in 2010.

The company's earnings just missed quarterly projections.

"Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters anticipate[d] earnings of 17 cents a share on revenue of about $18.3 billion," the Wall Street Journal wrote ahead of Amazon's Q4 2011 earnings report on January 31.

Immediately following the earnings report, Amazon stock took a tumble in after-hours trading, falling 8.6 percent ($16.71) to $177.73, according to the AP.