Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is scheduled to discuss fourth-quarter 2008 results today in a conference call at 5:00 PM ET. You can catch the live webcast of the call on the company's investor relations website.
For the quarter that saw the "best holiday season ever," analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Amazon to report a profit of $0.39 per share, compared to $0.48 per share in the same period of the previous year. Revenue for the quarter is expected to total $6.4 billion, down 13.5% from a year ago. But Amazon earnings have topped estimates in recent quarters, by as much as 42.3%.
For the full year, analysts expect earnings of $1.37 per share and revenue of $18.9 billion, up from $1.12 per share on $14.8 billion in 2007.
Analysts, on average, expect Amazon's long-term EPS growth to be 20.2%, which is better than that of the S&P 500. Yet the consensus recommendation has shifted from buy to hold AMZN in the past quarter. The share price has risen more than 30% from its 52-week low back in November but is still about 33% lower it was than a year ago.
See BloggingStocks' Amazon.com coverage for more information about the Seattle-based online retailer.
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