Amazon posts record profits for the holiday quarter

Amazon reported strong fourth-quarter earnings reflecting strong holiday sales and growth in its cloud business. The e-commerce giant posted revenue of $60.45 billion that marks a 38.2 percent jump from the previous quarter’s reported revenue of $43.7 billion.

Net income was $1.9 billion for the quarter. For the full 2017 year, it was $3 billion. This was partly due to a tax cut that benefited Amazon to the tune of $789 million.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, highlighted Alexa, the virtual assistant built into Amazon's Echo devices, as a driver of the strong earnings. The Echo Dot and Amazon's Fire TV Stick were its best-selling items in 2017. Echo alone was sold in the tens of millions, the company said.

Amazon Web Services totaled $5.1 billion in sales, pretty much on par with the projected $5 billion earmark. AWS grew 45 percent year-over-year, compared with a 29 percent growth rate for North American sales and 45 percent for international. Physical stores, including Amazon bookstores and Whole Foods, raked in $4.5 billion in revenue.

For the full year, Amazon had $177.9 billion in sales, up 31 percent from the previous year's $136 billion. Still, the company continued to invest in its business, resulting in a 2 percent drop in its operating profit to $4.1 billion.

Amazon's stock was up more than 6 percent in after hours trading.