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RAPAPORT... Online retailer Amazon.com reported that revenue jumped 20 percent year on year to $20.58 billion in the third quarter that ended on September 30. The company's loss jumped to $437 million compared with a loss of $41 million one year earlier.
“As we get ready for this upcoming holiday season, we are focused on making the customer experience easier and more stress-free than ever,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “In addition to our already low prices, we will offer more than 15,000 'lightning deals' with early access to select deals for Prime members, hundreds of millions of products across dozens of categories, curated gift lists like Holiday Toy List and Electronics Holiday Gift Guide, new features like #AmazonWishList, and a great new lineup of products like Kindle Voyage and Fire HD Kids Edition. And if you order your gifts on AmazonSmile, we’ll donate a percentage of your purchase price to your favorite charity.” During the quarter, Amazon launched, among numerous other initiatives in preparation for the Christmas season, Local Register, which is a mobile app and a secure credit card reader that it says enables individuals and small businesses to accept credit and debit cards from a smartphone or tablet for a flat rate and no long-term contract. In India, Amazon launched Pay with Amazon to help sellers grow their online businesses. Pay with Amazon is mobile-optimized across all operating systems including Android, iOS and Windows.
Amazon.com anticipates that sales will increase between 7 percent and 18 percent in the fourth quarter -- to between $27.3 billion and $30.3 billion -- and it foresees an operations balance in the range of a loss of $570 million to a gain of $430 million, compared with operating income of $510 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. The early guidance included approximately $470 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded during the period.
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