amazoncom inc reported its least profitable holiday quarter since 2014 on thursday leading to the biggest annual loss on record for the ecommerce giant which also disappointed wall street with its forecast amid concerns about cloud growth amazon amzn reported a holiday profit of 278 million or 3 cents a share up from 139 a share a year ago revenue increased to 1492 billion from 13741 billion a year ago analysts on average were expecting earnings of 17 cents a share on sales of 14571 billion according to factset shares fell more than 4 in afterhours trading immediately following the release of the results after closing with a 74 increase at 11291 “in the short term we face an uncertain economy but we remain quite optimistic about the longterm opportunities for amazon” chief executive andy jassy said in a statement amazon was expected to post a loss for the whole year for the first time since 2014 and holiday results actually led it to the company’s worst annual loss on record for the year amazon produced a net loss of 27 billion and revenue of 51398 billion up from 46982 billion a year ago and the company’s first annual sales total to surpass a halfbillion dollars amazon’s had never lost more than 14 billion in a single year since going public in 1997 according to factset records amazon’s ability to turn a profit in 2023 amid massive layoffs and other cost cuts will be the focus of wall street and most of that turns on amazon web services or aws the cloudcomputing offering has supplied the bulk of amazon’s profit in recent years including 2023 for the year aws had operating profit of 2284 billion while the rest of the business produced an operating loss of 1059 billion but cloudcomputing growth has reportedly slowed as microsoft corp msft displayed in its results and forecast last week and amazon also missed expectations for aws in the fourth quarter aws produced operating income of 521 billion on revenue of 2138 billion analysts on average were expecting profit of 573 billion on sales of 2185 billion according to factset opinion the cloud boom has hit its stormiest moment yet and it is costing investors billions any slowdown in aws would hit amazon’s bottom line as well as its overall top line and executives’ forecast for the first quarter shows less optimism than wall street expected amazon’s guidance calls for operating profit of breakeven to 4 billion and revenue of 121 billion to 126 billion while factset recorded an average analyst forecast of 404 billion in operating profit on sales of 12509 billion amazon stock has fallen more than 25 over the past 12 months but has experienced a rebound so far in 2023 gaining more than 33 year to date the sp 500 index spx has declined 102 in the past year while gaining 73 since the calendar flipped to 2023