Here's Why Amazon's Stock Jumped 10% Friday Morning

Shares of e-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) jumped as much as 9.9% higher on Friday morning, driven by a fantastic fourth-quarter report. By 10 a.m. EST, Amazon's shares had cooled down to a gain of 8.7%.

Amazon's fourth-quarter earnings landed at $6.47 per diluted share, 7% above the year-ago period's result. Revenues for the holiday quarter rose 21% to $87.4 billion. Your average Wall Street analyst would have settled for earnings in the vicinity of $4.03 per share on sales near $86 billion.

The results also compared favorably to Amazon's guidance targets. The top end of management's revenue guidance stopped at $86.5 billion. Operating profits were expected to fall from $3.8 billion to approximately $2.1 billion, and the top end of that guidance range stood at $2.9 billion. For this metric, Amazon posted a 3% increase to land at $3.9 billion.

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Source Fool.com