Amazon result--Su (fast)
Currency market
Interview: Alex Schuman---Currency strategist---Australia
>> we are back, folks and time to check out what’s going on with the amazon results. jeff bezos turning the first profit since it was founded a decade ago. su keenan has the latest.
>> interesting quarter. amazon.com saying fourth-quarter earnings surged to 28 times last year’s level in the final quarter. holiday sales helped the company post its first annual profit and its first consecutive quarterly net earnings since chief executive jeff bezos took it public in 1997. the seattle-based company said net income increased to just over $73 million or 17 cents a share, compared with a penny a share a year earlier. revenue jumped 36% to $1.95 billion helped by free therefore for certain orders, meeting estimates of analysts surveyed by thomson/first call. the company also raised its forecast for the year. bezos said the forecast was driven by new things it has done, opening a virtual online mall of shops, expanding its merchandise selection to sporting goods, gourmet foods, jewelry and health items.
>> that was an important step that amazon took. it hasn’t even fully played out and i think it is possible in coming years it will be a bigger component to growth.
>> and starbucks is among the more than 850 merchants using amazon.com’s website, selling coffees, teas and mugs to amazon’s more than 35 million customers. amazon benefitted from its busiest holiday season ever, setting a new record of more than two million items ordered in a single day. back to the numbers now. amazon’s earnings at 17 cents a share on a net basis. on a pro forma basis, using the calculation excluding stock -based pay and costs, amazon reported 29 cents a share, meeting analysts’ estimates. shares of amazon.com have more than doubled in value last year, making the shares the sixth biggest gainer in the nasdaq 100. shares traded lower 2% going into extended trading and now trading a few cents lower in the after-hours session. the conference call is just getting underway and we’ll update you throughout the hour.
>> thank you. moving on here, folks, we talked about currencies but the euro surged against the dollar in new york trading today. traders reacted to a report showing german business confidence unexpectedly hit a three-year high. also, a european central bank board member says that an interest rate cut is not in the cards any time soon. let’s see if the euro strength is carrying over to the new trading day in the asia-pacific region, and joining me now is alex schuman, currency strategist with the bank in australia. talk to me about the german business confidence figure. is that a currency-moving event or just the story du jour?
>> i guess it’s an important event pause we have seen euro strength through december and these confidence numbers show that the business sector wasn’t that dissuaded from recovery in in that month so it tells you that there’s an appetite or tolerance towards further euro rises in coming months. that was also what the european central bank member was talking about, at this stage there’s no sense in which interest rate cuts are on the horizon for the euro zone.
>> you’re closer to tokyo than frankfurt and i see the yen rose for the fifth time in six days today. that seems a larger story, one of greater concern or one of non-slowing momentum.
>> absolutely. this is an important event yesterday in dollar-yen because it was the first time we’ve seen yen close below 105 against the u.s. dollar. i guess really it vindicates what’s happening in the last week or so, which has been the stunning, very large trade surplus numbers among with capital inflows in japan, pushing the yen higher for all its worth. the largest intervention of all time fronted by the largest capital flow of all time.
>> so we’re all waiting to see what the federal reserve’s statement is going to be tomorrow. what do you expect and what might the ramifications be if they do change their statement or bias?
>> we aren’t expecting them to change their bias or statement in any significant way. so i would not be all that excited by it. if they do, it doesn’t undermine what i think is the big picture and that’s the u.s. dollar is facing a structural devaluation at the moment. it’s not dissimilar to the plaza deluu period in the 1980’s and in the mid ofst of that, the cyclical events won’t rescue the u.s. dollar if you have economic strength.%
>> thank you very much, alex schuman with commonwealth bank in australia. election season is underway in the philippines, as well as in new hampshire. but high school dropout fernando pojunior, a movie actor without political experience, leads the race for president playing out in manila. we’ll tell you how that is shaping up coming up.
